Cloaked Conspiracy
by Traban16
Summary: Stan awakes to find himself on a space-ship in the middle of nowhere. The ship is assigned to give a "field trip" to planet Tatooine for three young Jedi. Now Stan must take on the daunting task of not only finding his way back home, but also pretending to be something he's not long enough to get there.
1. Trapped in Space! Oh Shit!

**A/N** : New story! New story! Ain't it amazing just how many stories I come up with, and never finish? I know, I'm so awesome. Hahaha, but seriously, I've had this idea since I originally came up with "Just Difference" and "A Perfect Little Mistake".

 **The Cloaked Conspiracy** **– Stan awakes to find himself on a spaceship in the middle of space. Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny are Padawan learners assigned to a "field trip" to Tatooine under a Jedi Master. Now Stan must take on the daunting task of not only finding his way back home, but also pretending to be something he's not long enough to get there.** **South Park/Star Wars** **!** _ **South Park characters as Jedi, Bounty Hunters, Sith, and other things**_ **!**

 **Starts seven years after Phantom Menace.**

 **Chapter 1: Trapped in Space! Oh Shit!**

* * *

"How is he?" one voice inquired as the listener was in too groggy a state to answer or discern himself to the reality around him.

"Fuck how he's doing!" another interrupted moodily, "Where the fuck did he come from? That's my question right now."

"He was very weak when he appeared to us." yet another replied to the first, "Not only was his health in poor condition, but the medic-droid says that he's been talking in his sleep. Dude seems pretty messed up in the head, but I can't read him. It is… frustrating to say the least."

"Aww, is our wittle Kahl not so good a genius like everyone thinks he is?" the second voice, male, sneered in mocking sweetness. That is, right before he yelped in pain. "Ow! Kahl, that shit hurts!"

"Be quiet, Cartman!" the first voice, another male, commanded. "Go on, Kyle."

Kyle, or Kahl, or whatever his name was did as he was requested. "Well, the Master looked pretty unsettled by him. He says that it means something… Maybe… maybe even something dark."

"And again; where the fuck did he come from?" the rude one, Cartman asked again as the groggy patient groaned, allowing those around him to know that he was, in fact, amongst the conscious, if only loosely so.

"Is he awake?" the one, Kyle or Kahl, asked in a single breath as though if he were to speak too long the groggy individual would get up and snap his neck.

"If he is, then he hasn't yet opened his eyes." the calmest one of the trio, the one not yet identified, stated blatantly.

"Maybe he's blind, Ken. He looks blind, poor, and stupid." the rude Cartman snickered, "Just like you used to be."

The one called Ken didn't speak for a moment, seemingly ignoring the Cartman person, until he said, "He's not blind. Even so, blind people open their eyes to the darkness surrounding them. So if you, perhaps, have anything of _intelligence_ to put forth, then you can find me meditating with the Master. See ya later, Kyle."

"See ya later, Kenny." the one called Kyle said as the Ken or Kenny person must have departed with the sound of swooshing automatic doors.

The groggy person gave another groan, this one louder than before as he tried to open his heavily-lidded eyes.

"Are we still going to Tatooine?" the one called Cartman asked with the slightest sneer as the Kyle person scoffed.

"Yes, we are. And don't complain!" Kyle barked scoldingly as the groggy patient began to move his fingers to regain feeling in them, "This is supposed to be a learning experience. We finally get the chance to see beyond the Temple walls."

"Yeah, but Tatooine is nothing but sand!" Cartman whined as the dazed one slowly regained feeling for the soft bed he laid upon.

"I don't care if you don't like it," Kyle breathed harshly, "but I can promise you that if you mess this up for me and Kenny, we _will_ kill you."

"Oh, Kahl, you don't mean that. You're a goody two shoes Je—"

"Uhh," the bleary patient moaned as he rolled onto his side, having felt like his face was in a pillow his head laid atop. He hated that position as it made him feel like he was being smothered.

If only he could open his damn eyes, but they seemed almost glued shut.

"So… who the fuck is he?" Cartman asked as the groggy patient could practically feel someone hovering over him like a large shadow which blocked out the sun.

"We have absolutely no idea." Kyle sighed, "All we know is he is that he's as human we are. He also appears to be around our age. Other than that, he's a mystery. He holds no identification within the databanks. Plus, he has no identifiable marks. No scars, no burns, no anything. The Master looked worried about it when I examined this guy. Said it was either a sign of great living with no harm, or a sign of being an outcast with no one to cause harm to him."

" _Is_ he evil, then?" Cartman's tone didn't seem to care if he were evil or not. It was just a question to the great big shadow hovering over the loosely conscious patient.

"The Master's not sure… We'll have to wait until this guy wakes up." Kyle said, hesitation clear in his voice as the patient gave another groan, trying to let them know that he was in fact awake, but that he felt like he was trapped in quicksand. His body felt heavy, like liquid metal was forming all around him whilst they talked.

Harshly fighting the weight all around him, the patient opened his eyes to the world around him. Slowly his orbs took in the bright light and bubbles passing around him. It took only a moment for the realization to sink in. His head had not been on a pillow. He had not been in a soft bed. He was not in a room. He was in a _tank_ inside a room. Two blurry figures looked up to him, one incredibly close that was blocking most of the room's light, the other further away. However, the other seemed quick to see that he was waking up. This time _truly_ awake.

"Oh, Kah! Your precious patient is waking up." the closest blur, Cartman, sang while tapping the tank. The tapping filled the patient's ears with a rampaging thud like metal being beaten harshly by metal.

"But he's not ready!" Kyle, the second further away blur, shouted frantically.

"Then just give him a dose." Cartman said uncaringly with a dispassionate shrug.

"Are you _stupid_? Giving him another so soon could kill him!"

"Quit being such a baby. Give it to him." Cartman said, and moved to the side of the tank, allowing the harsh room light to reach the patient. The patient shut his eyes to the over powerful light, flinching away from it while hearing Kyle and Cartman fight over something to do with a dose.

Before the patient could open his eyes again, he could feel a liquid cold creep through his veins as his eyes closed from the sheer force of exhaustion that hit him like a freight train. Before completely losing consciousness, the patient was able to make out something through his eyelashes as his lids closed over his eyes.

The person walked up to the tank, inspecting the patient inside of the container as the person began to lightly thrash about to fight the sleep which was overtaking him. The figure stood out, with vibrant red hair.

"Sleep well, mystery man…" the figure said before turning away, its red hair the last thing the mysterious patient saw.

* * *

The patient's eyes snapped open from his dreamless sleep. He shot up, feeling no hindrance other than the pain in his ribs and the shock in his system from such violently hasty movements. Looking around, the invalid's eyes took in the most obvious fact that he was now out of the bubbly tank as he up at the ceiling once pain and exhaustion finally won out. Breathing steadily, the patient slowly sat up in what he hoped was an actual bed this time, and not just another hallucination brought on by tank-ness-fever or something. Looking around, he was glad to see that he was in an average room with no tanks or weird people tapping at him like he was some kinda weirdo fish-person-thing.

Reaching to his pocket for his inhaler, less he have need of it with the last dream of him being a fish in the tank, the invalid was shocked to see that it wasn't there. In fact, his pocket wasn't there! Looking down at his attire, he was sure that his right jeans pocket had held his inhaler where he had put it before leaving home.

And now he saw that his jeans were missing as well. In the place of his normal teenage attire was a set of strange robes that one might have found on the crazy homeless guy within the patient's hometown. Yet, even though they were gray, they were clean.

Good, so he wasn't homeless. That was a relief.

Yet, the question begged as to where he was. This place, while nice in its bareness, certainly wasn't his room or his house. In fact, the patient doubted that any place in town was as clean as the room was at the moment.

Had he been kidnapped? No, he was sure no one would kidnap him. His parents weren't rich, and he wasn't anything special.

With a sudden swooshing sound came a voice.

"I see you're awake," a young voice stated, interrupting the person's thoughts.

Turning around to his other side, the patient's blue eyes took in the angelic sight of a beautiful red-haired woman. She stood with soft features, her green eyes bright with expression as her lips curved into a small smile. Her skin looked soft to the touch as she gently tucked a red curl behind her ear.

Before the patient could say anything, even though his mind drew a blank, this new beauty when on speaking. The invalid stared at her.

"Before you say anything," the girl began, "Can you tell me your name?"

"Stanley, Stanley Marsh… just Stan Marsh," he answered, feeling a strange sense of calm creep slowly over him. He felt as though he could trust this pretty girl, who looked about his age.

"Well, Stan, where are you from?" the redhead girl questioned as Stan's head hurt like a white hot poker tapping against the cloud of cool calmness.

"Where— Where am I?" the boy gasped, even though that was not really what he cared about. He was being treated nice, and it seemed like a hospital or police station somewhere. What he had wanted to really ask was who she was, but with the pain in his throbbing forehead, the words had changed before he had even spoken them.

"Well, currently you're in hyperspace." the girl answered wryly with a smile much the same as her tone, "But to be more specific, you're aboard a private transport ship headed toward Tatooine."

"How— How did I get here?" the newly identified Stan Marsh asked as he ran a hand through his dark hair, hoping the pounding headache would soon settle.

"Tell me, Just Stan Marsh," the girl began, her voice rising above the pleasant drone of before, "How was it that you boarded this ship the moment we entered hyperspace? How long were you hiding on board? Did you use some form of cloaking device? WHO SENT YOU?! ANSWER ME!"

With each question and no pause between them for Stan to answer, the girl grew steadily more agitated as her face flushed red. The woman's gentle green eyes narrowed at Stan like two shards of ceramic jade. On her last question, she yelled in Stan's face while grabbing him by the collar of his clothes and shaking him violently.

"I WASN'T HIDING ANYWHERE," Stan replied hurriedly as he scrambled away from the crazy girl, falling off the edge of the bed. Still, that did not stop him and he stumbled backward even further when the girl stalked his movements by jumping onto the bed.

"How did you get here?" she questioned not too kindly while glaring down at him.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Stan shouted, "I was in the park with some friends at Stark Pond, and we were having a swimming race. Jimmy dunked my head through the lake pump, and all of a sudden I was having dreams about tanks and me being a merman!" he could tell that he was getting really desperate now, because even though the girl appeared to be shorter and more fragile than him, he was still cowering in the corner like some little bitch in fear of her. "Look, I don't know what happened, okay? Just don't kill me."

The girl once again narrowed her eyes, and Stan didn't like the feeling. It felt like she was looking down at him, through him even. Her emerald eyes pierced him as though she secretly held an X-ray to his brain. He hoped she came up with nothing, because he really didn't know what was going on.

Fucking hell, Jimmy, man. When Stan got back, he was gonna beat the shit out of the douchebag.

Stan started clutching at his head, the pounding headache feeling all of a sudden ten times worse with the sensation of a spider walking along his brain. Shaking his head furiously, Stan wished he had some bug spray or a fly swatter to get rid of the feeling. And then, just as quickly as it came, the feeling went away as he thought of removing its discomfort. Opening eyes he didn't remember closing, Stan looked up toward the bed to see the girl with a look of shock and surprise on her face.

The girl narrowed her eyes once more from their previous bulging state while standing from the bed.

"This shouldn't be _possible_ …" she muttered furiously, looking as though she wanted to bitch-slap Stan across his face. Her lips thinned into a white line, "Especially not twice now…"

"You're not gonna kill me… right?" Stan asked, just to be sure. Because with how pissed off the female looked, he couldn't be too sure either way.

Ignoring his question, the girl started to the door, her brown robes gently swaying with her fervent movements, "I'll be back later with food. Even though you're out of the bacta tank, you'll still need time to recover." and with that said in a hiss, the girl left without another word through the swooshing mechanical metal door.

"Holy shit, I'm in the future!" Stan exclaimed after seeing the door, throwing himself back into the corner as he decided to be as hysterical as his father would, given the situation.

Fucking shit, Jimmy, man. Stan was gonna _kill_ him!

Stan, after five minutes of muttering to himself and being in the fetal position, had finally regained enough rationality to know that acting like his father would not help anything or anyone. So, being the individual that he was, Stan got up from the corner and dusted himself off while glancing around the room. The room was metallic and white, with strange objects around it. There was no clock to tell the time, as Stan had hoped he could find. Looking down at his feet, Stan saw that they were exposed and the realization brought on a sudden chill to the bottoms of his feet.

Finding some socks and boots in the room, Stan put them on before sitting on the bed. After another five minutes, the small sterile room was beginning to bore into him with its clean simplicity. Looking to the door, Stan wondered what the rest of the strange future house looked like when he paused.

What would his Uncle Jimbo, who was bat-shit paranoid from Vietnam, say if he saw Stan acting so carelessly while being with an unknown person, in an unknown place? Sitting back down as he had started to stand up, Stan went on to think about what he should do. He was only sixteen years old. He hadn't gotten his license yet, his girlfriend had just dumped him for the resident geek, and here he was being held against his will. Was it against his will? He hadn't fought or anything. Shit, he hadn't even asked if he was being held hostage. Wait, was he supposed to ask? Was that proper etiquette for a hostage-kidnapper relationship? Stan figured it must have been. But still, was that the first question he should have asked. Should he have treated it like some kinda date? Maybe sort of like how a guy didn't ask his girlfriend if she was a virgin until right before sex.

Oh shit, Stan thought! What if the girl wanted to rape him?! He had never had actual sex before! What was he going to do? Should he just lay there and take it?

Or rather, lay there and let _her_ take it?

Would she even rape him by sitting herself down on him? Maybe she'd be one of those cruel bitches who, like, used dildos on her boyfriends. Oh crap! What if she raped _him_ with a dildo?! Stan didn't think his poor virgin butthole could take that kind of abuse. Stan resolved to fight for his butt-virginity should things ever come to that.

"Alright, here's your fo—"

"Am I being held hostage? Am I supposed to ask that? Are you going to rape me? Please don't rape me! Are you a virgin? I'M A VIRGIN! Are you gonna rape me up the butt? PLEASE DON'T RAPE MY BUTTHOLE WITH A DILDO! I'M A BACKDOOR VIRGIN AND I'D LIKE TO STAY THAT WAY! Look, if you want sex or whatever, then I'll just lay here and let you mount me for your pleasure, but PLEASE DON'T KILL ME OR RAPE MY VIRGIN ASS!"

At the end of Stan's frantic babbling from his scare as the metal door hissed open, the redheaded girl stood within the doorway with a tray of foods and her face as red as her hair. Stan clamped his mouth shut, hearing the woman sputter and stammer while staring wide-eyed and unblinkingly at him. Her mouth, at one instance, was agape like a fish out of water. Then she turned around, setting the tray of strange foods on the door side table before leaving in a swish of robes with the door swooshing shut behind her.

Stan hung his head. It was now safe to say that he had ruined their hostage-kidnapper relationship, and that he was in fact going to be butt-raped by an extra-large dildo when the woman came back.

"…No, you deal with—with _this_!" the woman yelled as the door came open again a minute later, her frantically gesturing at Stan, who was still seated on the bed.

Behind the woman was a blond male. The blond was shabby and so were his robes. His blue eyes were a lighter shade than Stan's own cerulean orbs. The blond's features were mischievously set, the wicked grin on his face suggesting both mirth and amusement.

Stan's eyes widened. Oh, Jesus Christ, save him now! The girl had come back with a weird homeless guy to butt-rape him, or at least hold Stan down while the woman did the butt-raping with a strap-on dildo.

"So," the blond started, his eyebrows up and his grin growing, "what's this I hear about butt-rape?"

"KENNY!" the girl exclaimed, smacking the blond in the shoulder while her face burned a mighty red.

"Right, right, no butt-rape." the blond, Kenny, sounded just a tad-bit too disappointed.

"No ass-raping?" Stan asked hopefully as the guy sighed.

"No rape at all, actually…" the Kenny guy muttered with a pout and his arms folded.

Relief couldn't seem to fill Stan fast enough. He realized that he was still being a bit too hysterical, but boy did it feel good knowing that the people holding you hostage weren't going to rape you.

At least, not yet anyway…

"Am I being held hostage?" Stan asked slowly as the blond Kenny looked at him.

"No, not really." Kenny said. "That is, you can leave at any point. But just know, we are traveling at speeds faster than light, so you might wanna wait for us to make a stop before running from us as fast as your legs can carry you."

"Oh…" was Stan's response as all he took from that was that he was free to leave them when they stopped. Wait… "What do you mean by, "speeds faster than light"? Is that even real?"

"Of course it's real!" the red-haired girl exclaimed. Stan blinked as he realized that she had slipped further into the room and was now arranging the food in front of him. She looked toward him, an indignant expression on her face. "What? You've never heard of hyperspace?"

"You mentioned that before," Stan conceded, allowing himself to recall less paranoid thoughts, "but it only just clicked to me. Sorry, I'm more than a little jumbled with this whole thing." This whole kidnapping, is what Stan wanted to say, but these people weren't kidnapping him apparently.

"Yes, well," the redhead cleared her throat before throwing Stan a pointed look. It suggested that he pay close attention to her next words, "Hyperspace is the alternate form of travel that starships use to achieve faster-than-light speeds."

"Uhh, huh?" Stan cocked his head to the side, hoping that another headache wouldn't come on with all the questions that were bumbling around in his mind.

"Basically, it means that we're moving faster than light." Kenny said, moving next to Stan on the bed. "Now then, what's your name?"

"I'm Stan… Stan Marsh," Stan greeted, his hand stuck out for the firm handshake Kenny gave.

"Well then, you get to know my name. I'm called Kenny McCormick," Kenny grinned, showing his extremely healthy white teeth to Stan before gesturing over to his female companion. "And this is Kyle Broflovski."

"It _hasn't_ been a pleasure to meet you," the girl, Kyle, sneered lightly while giving Stan the tray of warm foods.

"Don't mind Kyle," Kenny said, "Kyle's just cranky because no one can get inside your head."

"What?" Stan asked through a mouthful of food, having felt so hungry once his nose took in the smell of food that he shoveled the weird looking blue stuff into his mouth. The three-legged orange chicken-thing was looking good as well, but first Stan wanted some of the green baked potato lump.

"Nothing, just eat." Kyle spoke firmly, her arms folded across her underdeveloped chest. Really, Stan had seen flat-chest girls before, but this woman really was flat like an ironing board. Maybe that was why she seemed so pissed off all the time?

"So Stan, my friend," Kenny breathed causally as he wrapped an arm around the devouring Stan's shoulder like a friend would, "Tell us, where do you come from?"

"I live in South Park, if that's what you mean." Stan said after swallowing, remembering his manners least his mom split his head with a good scolding him when he got home.

"And where is South Park?" Kenny asked, his mouth slowly going downward into a soft frown.

"You know, Colorado," Stan replied, blinking a few times as he stared at Kenny. He had never heard of anyone on the entire planet who hadn't heard of the extremely weird town of South Park, where things from hamster invasions to ultimate robot showdowns happened for no apparent reason other than random repeating coincidence.

"Is that in the Core Worlds? You know, like Columus?" Kyle questioned as Kenny shook his head before Stan could reply.

"No," Kenny informed the redhead while pondering half-formed thoughts of his own, "There are no Core planets by the name of Colorado. Plus, I've never heard of a place by the name of South Park before either."

"It does sound unusual…" Kyle agreed as Stan stared between them.

"You guys have never heard of South Park before?" Stan asked hesitantly. They were probably just messing with him, but by the looks they were now giving him, maybe not.

Maybe it was a good thing they had never been to Colorado before. Maybe they were foreigners?

"Nevertheless, _you_ are a stowaway." Kyle sniffed promptly, pointing at Stan, who blinked at the finger in his chest, "When we get to Tatooine, you _will_ be turned over to the proper authorities."

"Or maybe the Master will let us keep him as a pet?" Kenny said hopefully, touching Stan's nose. "I'm gonna call you Zodberg!"

"Uhh…" Stan stammered, blinking at the blond boy wildly.

"I don't think the Master will let us keep someone we don't know the slightest thing about on the ship. What if he's a terrorist? Or a spy, even?" Kyle replied as Kenny gave an innocent look.

"Well, we know his name is Stan, and that he's from nowhere." Kenny said, tapping his chin, "We also know that he can't be read. Plus, he's so adorable. Just look at him, Ky!"

Stan blinked as Kyle gave him a scrutinizing look. Finally, after what seemed like hours of Kyle gazing deep into his eyes, the redhead gave a weary sigh that left her shoulders sagging a little.

"At any rate, the Master will know what to do with him when we reach Tatooine, or maybe the Council will take this matter importantly." Kyle mumbled, more to herself than anyone else. She raked a hand through her soft-looking curly red hair, "Until then, let's get him something to drink so he doesn't choke on any Fota bones or Herali sprouts. The Master said for the three of us to take care of him, so we'll keep him away from the rest of the crew and passengers. Is it possible for one of us to be on guard at all times?"

"Maybe," Kenny cast a glance at Stan, his features settling into cool calculation, "But Cartman and I are still working with the Master on the advanced meditation methods. You, on the other hand, have the whole day free to play medical droid.

"Oh joy…" Kyle muttered under her breath as Stan got the feeling Kyle didn't like him.

A shame, because she was so pretty and Stan felt like he could get her to stop being so pissy…

"So I'm, like, some kind of prisoner until we get to this Tatooine place?" Stan asked. The two in brown robes turned to look at him, apparently forgetting his presence for a moment.

"For the time being." Kyle informed promptly without the slightest hesitation, "Despite Kenny, we're all uneasy with an unknown passenger riding along with us."

Stan said nothing. He continued to slurp the grayish noodles that were at the corner of his food tray.

Well, so long as he was both lost and held prisoner, at least the food was good.

* * *

"So let me get this straight," Stan started out slowly, his eyebrows drawn together as he gave Kenny an especially dry look. "The galaxy is a Republic?"

"That is correct." Kenny said with a nod. The blond in brown robes was leaning against the cabinets within the room. Kyle had left them to get Stan's medical results.

"And that is controlled by the Galactic Senate?"

"Yes."

"Which is headed by the Supreme Chancellor?"

"Again, you are correct."

"Who at present is named Palatine?"

"Yes."

"And Coruscant is the central star system?" Stan said, his face having progressively dropped into a frown.

"I'm glad you've retained so much!" Kenny chirped with a smile.

"Are we in Star Wars?" Stan asked in a deadpan while Kenny looked bewildered.

"Uhh… no. We're in a private Republic transport special suited for long distance civilian transportation." Kenny corrected as Stan shook his head.

"No, I mean _Star Wars_." Stan waved his hand through vague gestures, "Ya know… with all the Jedi, Sith, Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, and that Han Solo guy shooting first."

The look on Kenny's face could not have been more perplexed.

"I have absolutely no idea what that last bit was about or what this Star Wars is you keep going on about," Kenny drawled, his eyes narrowing slightly. "However, the galaxy is teeming with Jedi, Bounty Hunters, and Smugglers. The Sith, however, we'd love to believe have fallen to extinction."

"Yeah…" Stan said awkwardly. He was totally in Star Wars. Goddammit, Jimmy, you asshole… "Sorry, I must just still be confused."

"Greatly so," Kenny sniffed, still looking mildly upset before he sagged a little, "But… I can understand. You've done extremely well given your current situation. I'm sure you must be missing your friends and family back home."

Stan said nothing, figuring that he'd eventually find some way back home. Besides, if he couldn't do that, then he didn't want to really dwell on it much. As far as he knew, the Jedi could do practically anything, and once he told Yoda about his problems, he be clicking his heels together three times and getting home in time for dinner.

"Umm… I know about some of the other planets, too." Stan shrugged, feeling that he should let Kenny know. Stan had only watched the three original Star Wars films with his geeky cousin once and then again as a joke with his friends from the baseball team.

"What of your training in the Jedi arts?" Kenny asked with that same friendly smile. "We took stock of you, and it seems you've got the potential to be trained."

"Umm… you mean teaching me the Force and stuff?" Stan asked to which Kenny nodded. "Dude, I got nothing. I'm not even sure if I entirely get the concept of some unseen entity molesting everything in the universe."

"That's exactly what I thought of the Force!"

"While I'm glad to see that you've found a friend in the possible assassin or terrorist, Kenny," Kyle had returned, in her hand was a device roughly the size of Stan's IPod back home. He kind of wanted his iPod at the moment now that he thought about it, "I will remind you not to disrespect the Force. And that you're supposed to be assessing his backward bumpkin knowledge of the known galaxy."

"Then you'll be pleased to know that this bumpkin has some serious genius retention, Kyle!" Kenny exclaimed as he roughly patted Stan on the back in an overly friendly manner. Stan liked Kenny, who seemed to be very easygoing and tolerant of him. Kyle, however, was still very much averse to him, so Stan made sure not to appear as comfortable with Kenny as he felt.

It was almost like he had been friends with Kenny for years, and that his friendship with Kyle had hit a snag somewhere around the beginning of puberty when she started bleeding and he started taking a longer time in the bathroom than her.

"What are you talking about, Ken?" Kyle sighed, almost as though Kenny praised people very often for very minimal and stupid things.

"He's strong in the Force," Kenny announced, a hand around Stan's shoulders as he held the raven-haired boy close to him, "and he says he knows about some of the worlds."

Kyle arched a delicate eyebrow, making Stan feel stupid and small with the simple action, "Oh, is this so? Well then, mystery man who appears out of thin air on ships entering hyperspace, please dazzle us with your in-depth documentation on the planets."

"Yeah, well…" Stan sucked in air as he readied himself to basically lie through his teeth. He was calling up memories on a movie he hadn't seen in over a year, so heaven help him if he screwed up and they skewered him with their lightsabers… which he had yet to see either of them have in their possession.

"We are waiting, Sir _Just Stan Marsh_ ," Kyle crossed her arms again, but this time began tapping her foot impatiently.

Stan began rubbing at the back of his neck as he prepared to take the plunge. "Umm… first there's Hoth. Then there is Bespin. My friend lost a hand there, but got it fixed later. And others like Dantoonie," hadn't Leia mentioned that one when she lied to the masked guy who turned out to be her dad, "Endor… umm, Alderaan… and Dagobah."

Kyle's lips had thinned again into a straight line, and her skeptical stance had not shifted in the slightest even while Kenny was bouncing on the bed like a three year who had just seen the trailer to the new Avengers movie. If Kyle chose to call him out on his bullshit, Stan wasn't sure how far he'd get in defending his claims. Especially if the redhead really did own a lightsaber and started interrogations with that as her tool of trade.

"Tell us, _Just Stan_ ," Kyle mocked scornfully as her eyes narrowed on him, "Have you even been to any of the planets you just listed?"

"Pppssshhh," Kenny blew the whole thing off as he jumped from the bed and whirled around on spot, his robes flying out around him, "None of that matters! The fact that he even knew them means something. Right, Kyle? Umm… Kyle?"

But Kyle was not one to be distracted it seemed, something Stan would have found mildly attractive if it was not being used against him now. Kyle's jade green eyes were trained on Stan, who hoped desperately that the drop of nervous sweat at the side of his face was only his imagination. However, since no glowing swords of death were being drawn at the moment, Stan was not going to let Kyle make a fool out of him when the girl didn't know one hundred percent that he was all bullshit.

"Yes, yes I have been to those worlds." Stan responded with what he hoped was a small measure of confidence.

Kyle scoffed, so Stan would show her.

"Hoth is cold. Like, freeze your balls off cold. And there's all this snow everywhere. And Bespin is this really cool cloud world where the city is in the clouds."

Even still Kyle looked skeptical and unconvinced, but behind her in secret, Kenny was shooting Stan thumbs up and gleeful smiles.

"And the forest moon of Endor has these little vicious teddy bear monsters on it!" Stan finished, proud that he had remembered so many details from something he cared about as much for as the next upcoming political election.

Finally Kyle seemed to explode, her face red with fury instead of embarrassment, "YOU'RE SO FULL OF SHIT! WHAT THE HELL IS A TEDDY BEAR, YOU MORON!?"

Oh no, Stan was not taking this shit laying down, "YOU TELL ME SINCE YOU THINK YOU KNOW EVERYTHING, YOU GENIUS ASSHAT!" and until death swords were out, Stan would hold his new ground, nose to nose with the beautiful redhead.

Maybe if he kissed her she'd stop bitching at him…

"KISS! KISS! USE YOUR TONGUES FOR BATTLE!" Kenny was practically salivating at the sight of their lips being only a hair's breath away from one another.

"That's it!" Kyle raged, pushing Stan back with surprising force and making him tumble over onto the bed behind him, "I'm through with this!"

"Wait, Kyle!" Kenny had shouted, and not in panic or in a friendly tone like when he joked with them earlier. No, Kenny's soft and easy face was now stone serious and his bright blue eyes were like orbs of frozen heat as they and his words stopped Kyle dead in her tracks, "All fun and games aside, what just happened here was not cool. You need to calm down and relax."

"But, Kenny—" Kenny held up a hand, stopping his friend from continuing to make excuses. They were hosts in this instance. Kyle needed to control that temper if they were ever going to get the full story out of Stan and find out how the fair-skinned, raven-haired guy had stowed away on their ship.

"No excuses, Ky." Kenny then gestured toward Stan, who was still reeling from being pushed around like he was the frail short girl in the situation a moment ago. "You owe our guest here an apology. We are of the Jedi Order. We do not argue with others about what they may or may not know." Kenny then turned his back completely to Stan, obscuring the boy's view of the stern look he was currently cowing Kyle with, "And we certainly don't act like know-it-all assholes. Jedi help to serve, protect, and guide. Not harass and douche."

Before Kyle could stop sputtering, Kenny was back to smiling and had clapped his hand s as a happy expression took over his face, "Now then, I'll be leaving you two for that rather private apology. I need a drink after dispensing all this wisdom. It leaves a guy thirsty!"

Kenny escaped the room with a bounce in his step, the swooshing automatic doors closing behind him as it also left Stan confined to the room with the strangely silent Kyle.

"Uhh," Stan started awkwardly, feeling the silence pressing down on him as he tried not to stare at Kyle, but felt that he had to look at the girl because she was there and wouldn't take too kindly to being ignored, "you know, you don't have to actually apologize to me."

"No," Kyle shook her head, disturbing her curls as Stan wanted to see if the hair was as soft as it looked, "I do need to apologize. Kenny was right. I shouldn't be so angry with you when you're not even what I'm really mad at."

"Really?" Stan ventured, hoping this was true.

"Yeah, really," Kyle said, then graced Stan with a small beautiful smile, "I've kind of been taking my frustrations out on you, and that isn't fair of me at all. We've been under a lot of stress lately with this trip to Tatooine being sprang on us all of a sudden, and then came meeting the new master who'll be over us. Now we have to deal with all this advanced training he's been putting us through…"

"Look," Stan felt bad for Kyle and the others now. It sounded a lot like being kicked off the baseball team and having to coach pee-wee soccer or something alongside a raging hard-ass head coach, "I need to apologize to you, too. I'm really worried I might never see my home again."

"Why?" Kyle asked, and sat down on the bed next to Stan. Stan liked the look of concern on Kyle's face. It made her pretty in the light of the room.

"Because I think I'm never going to see my home again, not to mention my planet… It's like every second that passes I feel a little more anxious that no one will be able to help me." Stan rubbed his temples, feeling a migraine coming on, "And when I try to force myself to think about getting home or where it could be, I start to get a headache."

Kyle was silent for a long stretch of time. Stan figured that Kenny should have been back by now. He looked up ahead, envisioning his new friend coming into the room to tell him that they knew exactly where his home world was because "the Force" had shown it to them or something like that. Stan briefly considered telling Kyle and Kenny everything so they would be better able to help him. But that thought washed away as soon as it had crossed his mind. The two were Jedi and from what Kyle had said, would not be able to help. They were too involved in their own things, with their new Jedi Master and in their training. The dark-haired boy wanted nothing more than to rip open the air in front of him and skip through the wormhole back home. There he would proceed to beat the living shit out of Jimmy.

However, he shook his head. He needed guidance right now, not anger. But not the kind of counsel he would get from his father or uncle Jimbo. He needed to speak with an experienced wise man who could tell him what needed to be done next. Stan needed the advice of a Jedi Master like Old Ben Kenobi or Yoda. Hell, at the moment Stan would even take an ass-wipe like Luke to give him some words of enlightenment for the next step back home.

"Can you remember anything more about your planet?" came Kyle's quiet tone of voice, as though speaking any louder would chase away Stan's already draining memory. Stan looked up at Kyle, smiling a little as he shook his head. He wanted to talk to the redhead about it, tell her everything so someone could feel just as confused and hopeless as he did, but that wasn't right. It wasn't Kyle's fault he was lost in Star Wars, so Kyle shouldn't have to suffer for it by sharing in his pain.

"No, not really," Stan said with a sigh as he tossed back his hair. It was staring to grow out and he would need a haircut soon. "All I know is that it's not in the known galaxy. It's pretty far from any planet I know, anyway. The best I can say is that it's somewhere out in uncharted space."

"So you come from the Unknown Regions?" Kyle asked, but didn't give Stan the chance to answer as she sat up and stared at Stan. She grabbed his hands and held them close to her, making Stan's eyes bulge wide open and his face flush a vibrant red color. Holy shit, this was starting to go like a porno he had seen last summer! Now all Kyle had to say was that she'd help him remember with her body, and Stan would gladly take the bait.

"I'll help you remember," Kyle started, and Stan felt his heart race. He closed his eyes and leaned forward, puckering his lips. "I can use the Force to glimpse into your mind if you'll let me."

Stan's face fell with great disappointment. He peeked open an eye to see Kyle had her eyes closed as well, but she did not move closer or pucker her lips. She was breathing evenly, her whole body relaxed like a dead person. Stan could feel a gentle, tranquil energy rolling off Kyle. It tingled against his palms from her palms and made Stan feel like everything was neither right nor wrong with the universe. Like there was a higher power watching things happen around them and just shrugging its shoulders as time and space wore onward.

Peaceful.

Then the headache from before began to return while Stan felt like something was once again crawling along his brain with spider legs. It felt wrong, and it burned as it began digging into his skull like a drill. Stan shook his head, hoping to shake off the painful probe, but it fought hard to stay.

" _You have to open your mind to me, Stan_ ," Kyle said without her lips moving at all, but then the spider on Stan's brain turned into the cold slither of a cobra and Stan felt like screaming as it felt like the snake sunk its fangs into his mind.

"Ow, fuck!" Stan hissed, and stiffened as he mentally burned at the snake, which writhed and wiggled in its demise. His mind pulsed powerfully and Stan wretched his hands from Kyle's grasp in order to clutch his head. This phantom pain was beyond anything he had ever felt before in a headache or migraine. His skull was on fire and surely his head was split down the middle because it felt like it.

Kyle watched helplessly as Stan fell from the bed and quivered on the floor. His eyes were rolling madly in his head. Kyle dropped down and lifted Stan's head, holding onto the boy's hand as if to tether them together.

Stan wanted it just to end… to black out… to die and be done with the pain… But then it was gone, leaving him empty and wane in his existence before he felt something filling his soul again with the energy and desire to live. He was lying limply with his head in Kyle's lap and his right hand clasped between Kyle's palms. Stan looked up into those bright green eyes through a kind of mist. The air was ringing in his ears. Kyle looked shaken, but Stan was quickly feeling better as he rose up and sat next to Kyle with his back against the bed.

"Dude… the fuck was that?" Stan asked, his breath hitching as he looked at Kyle's pale face.

"Stan… that wasn't me…" Kyle looked unsure of her own words, as though they sounded so very wrong to her. "At first it was. I was just gently trying to find feelings of comfort and those usually end up with imagines of home. But then… then something dark came and tried to use me. It was evil and vile, and it penetrated me to get to you." Kyle looked up into Stan's blue eyes.

"But you drove it away. You did it, and I couldn't… You were so… so strong…" Kyle whispered, in awe. It made Kyle realize that the bright pulse of Force energy that threw off the two mental probes was not at all imaginary. It had really happened. Kyle had felt it, and almost saw it through the Force acting as a second set of eyes.

Whatever he was about to respond with, as even Stan wasn't sure what would have come out of his mouth at that moment, it was cut off. Kenny had just come back to them from the sliding door and he looked startled to see the two on the floor looking shook up and pale.

"Umm," Kenny raised an eyebrow, "did I miss something?"

"No," Kyle was quick to respond, shooting Stan a pleading look to not say anything. He didn't know why Kyle wanted to hide their incident from the blond, but Stan would go along with it in the wake of their bat-shit crazy moment and their budding new friendship. "Stan and I just got really bad headaches, and we're trying to mellow them out."

"Oh," Kenny smiled brightly as he came over and dropped to the floor to sit in front of them with his legs folded, "This is perfect! We can show Stan how to meditate, and then teach him how to use the Force in order to recover faster from stuff like this."

"Did the Master approve of us teaching him anything?' Kyle asked, but didn't have the scowl of disapproval like ten minutes ago. Awesome, Stan felt his heart soar. Kyle was finally warming up to him.

"Whatever," Kenny waved his hand through the air dismissively. He didn't give three fucks and a Jawa what "the Master" permitted of or not at the moment. He wanted to play teacher and help out his new friend. "I don't care what he approves. Besides, Stan has the potential. We shouldn't let something like that go to waste!"

Kyle looked on the fence for a moment, but no longer than that as she nodded. Stan felt his heart leap for joy again. It was real. Kyle really was his friend now! Yes, freakin' sweet! "You're right, Ken. Lets get started."

Kenny's smile could not have gotten any bigger. He pumped a fist in the air like Stan wanted to, and then became dead serious.

"Okay, Stan, here's how it goes." Kenny settled himself, getting comfortable as Kyle did the same and Stan followed their example. "You just start like you're going to fall asleep. Just focusing on your breathing and letting yourself ignore all else as you concentrate inward. You must reach inside yourself, through the pain in order to find the Force at your core."

Stan did as he was being told, focusing on nothing but Kenny's advice and the feel of his own breathing.

This was the start of something new, and Stan was beginning to think he liked it.


	2. Umm… Am I a Jedi Now?

I'm a bit disheartened that my last Chapter didn't really get any attention. I was so thinking this would be a great idea for a story, but it seems I may be wrong. Oh well, I shall not abandon this! I shall preserve! Though, I do have other ideas in store should I choose to abandon this one… Just you all wait… BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

 **Chapter 2: Umm… So I'm a Jedi Now?**

* * *

As the lights of ship dimmed, gradually replaced by the natural lights of the few twinkling stars that could get through the nearly continual glare, the great and majestic void of space took on a vastly different appearance. Under the dark evening skyline that was fat approaching the space shuttle, the stars they passed seemed to become gigantic natural fireflies, and all the pea-sized planets in the distance that so dominated their view of the bleak darkness appeared to Eric Cartman like a mark of folly, a futile pride striving against the vastness and majesty beyond the grasp of any mortal. Even the low hum of the ship's engines felt somehow mournful, almost as a herald to what would eventually, inevitably, become of their journey and the great trek of all civilization.

As he stood behind the Master, who at the moment was deep in meditation on the viewing deck, Cartman was indeed pondering such profound universal truths as the subtle change of day to night in the inky darkness of space. Beside him, though, Kenny could not have cared less about great truths or whatever. He was about to be on solid ground again, and that was all that mattered.

"You seem a little on edge, Kenneth," the Master's voice was hushed and purposeful as he noted Kenny's aura in the Force.

"Not at all," came the unconvincing reply.

"Geez, Kennee, I haven't seen you this nervous since you fell into that puddle of yellow goop." Cartman's little distraction had the desired effect, and the pair shared a much-needed laugh while the Master remained silent. Coming out of it, though, the Master spoke again and immediately Kenny remained on edge.

"You're sweating, Kenneth," the man noted, "Take a deep breath. Relax."

"I hate flying is all," Kenny said, but Cartman didn't buy that for a minute. He wouldn't say anything just yet, however. Kenny would tell him about it later, and Cartman had a strong feeling it was somehow connected to that Stan guy they had found on their ship.

"Kenny, relax," Cartman reiterated. Kenny glanced at him, and Cartman could see that his blond friend wanted to share with him something more, but a glance at the Master's back told Cartman all he needed to know.

Yes, when the time was right, Kenny would reveal his troubles to him. It was only a matter of time.

* * *

"Okay," Kenny clapped his hands together as he entered the room that was now Stan's quarters, "Cartman is distracting the Master with training, so we can practice some more with getting you connected to the Force."

Kyle was sitting on the bed while Stan stood in the center of the small standard white room. He had been given more of the Jedi attire to wear since he possessed no clothes of his own at the moment. The Jedi robes were simple and comfortable. They consisted of long, flowing robes, including an overtunic, an under-tunic, a hooded cloak and a tabard. The apparel was of low quality and if he moved around in them too much they would start to itch against his skin, but for the most part Stan ignored it. Kyle, after giving Stan the clothes and coming back when he was dressed, said this was a way of subtly teaching youngling Jedi to ignore distracting physical sensations when Stan brought up the issue. In effect, Kyle went on, the wearing of such robes became an exercise in concentration.

Stan noticed that Kenny and Kyle wore different colored robes than him. From what he remembered of the movies, the Jedi had always wore costumes ranging from dark brown to black, but at the moment Kenny was in robes of a muted orange or terracotta color. Kyle's tabard was even made from a synthetic leather. Kyle's robes were more form fitting and from what Stan could tell, she had designed her robes herself. They were green robes which made her stand apart from Kenny and Stan.

Now that Stan was paying attention, he noticed that the left side of Kyle's dress was always turned on the right part of the torso. The overtunic and tabard had two symmetric pieces of cloth in the front hanging beneath and sewn at the waist, which stopped just above Kyle's knees.

All of them wore plain loose-fitting trousers and a thin cloth belt that matched the color of their overtunic. Kenny had given Stan a leather utility belt that Cartman had outgrown some years back and the blond had kept it as a backup because he could fit it now as a teenager when it had been worn by Cartman as a child. Kyle had quickly emptied the belt of most of the specialized field gear, like the energy capsules and special tools that only real Jedi were permitted to use. Stan was, however, allowed to keep the tool pouches, a breather pouch, and the food rations. Besides that, Stan was given a pair of sturdy leather boots with ridged soles secondhand from Kenny. Stan noticed that Kyle's boots were softer than his, which made him a little jealous. The two had told Stan that his Jedi clothing were thermo-sensitive, helping to protect him from the elements, and allowed for great maneuverability.

Currently at the moment, Stan himself was dressed in his sand-colored robes and dark leather boots with ridged soles. His dark brown cloak was thrown to an empty corner at the other side of the room.

"Now then, let's start from where we left off last time," Kenny moved further into the room, circling Stan as he began to instruct. He cleared his throat, "The Force has a range of powers that function in accordance to fundamental attributes that are cardinal in nature, and categorized by the way in which a user is able to focus on the Force while using an ability."

"Dude, what?" Stan squawked before he had a chance to stop himself. Kenny's shoulders deflated before he sighed and shrugged them.

"The hell if I know, man. I was just repeating what the instructors back at the temple always told us." Kenny admitted, to which Kyle scoffed.

"Ken, it's just not you. Just try explaining things the way you understand them. Stan seems to be around your level of low-grade brain functionality." Kyle smirked when Stan threw a nasty look.

"Bitch," Stan muttered, but was still a little cautious about pissing off the girl with the deadly laser sword weapon. Especially since he had caught a glimpse of Kenny's at their last meal.

"Okay, here goes," Kenny took a deep breath and then grinned, "Like your three sexy orifices, the Force can be divided into three categories which service to pleasure every need."

"They're sorted as Control, Sense, and Alter by the Jedi Order." Kyle chimed in seeing the gleam in Kenny's eye. Stan was quickly learning that the twinkle in Kenny's eye meant mischief if not outright perversion of whatever subject they were discussing. "Under the three themes we've learned are several core abilities. They can be expanded upon and changed, depending on the user. In the academy, we were taught that stemming from each of the core abilities were several different ways to manipulate the Force, some of them very common and mainstream within the typical Jedi teachings and Sith legends while others were more personally developed and unique if not outright rare and exceptional."

"Okay, I understand that." Stan nodded his head along with what Kyle was saying. It was pretty simple, even if Kyle threw around a lot of fancy words to say that the Jedi had three main groups of powers that the Force could be used for.

"The first path is also the easiest." The blond stepped in front of Stan and adjusted Stan's body so that he was standing at a relaxed stance, "Control is easiest because it is internal. It's your ability to connect to the Force within yourself and use it to your benefit."

"Start your Meditation of Emptiness like we showed you," Kyle's voice was calm and balanced. Stan closed his eyes instead of choosing to see why Kyle sounded so at peace. Kyle was already starting the meditation technique, leading by example. It was something Stan deeply respected Kyle for even though he had only known her for a very short time. "Our order teaches us from a very young age this type of meditation. It's used to empty ourselves of feelings and open us to the Force. It allows us to shed emotions and feelings in order to center ourselves in simple power as well as the strength of the Force."

"The stillness of Empty Meditation allows any Force-user to center themselves and achieve deep inner peace." Kenny was also now in the calm of introspection, his voice misty and trance-like, "Think of it as finding the eye of calm within the center of your emotions."

"Hmm," Stan was feeling it, the voices of his two friends feeling more and more distant as he feel deeper into himself.

"There are other forms of meditation. Ones like Moving Meditation and Floating Meditation… I even know someone who does Healing Meditation back at the temple on Coruscant."

Stan's eyes snapped open and his focus was shattered as he felt Kenny's warm breath on his neck and heard the blond's voice behind him in his ear. He nearly jumped out of his skin when Kenny's arms wrapped around him and squeezed him tight.

"Ssshhh," Kenny whispered, and released Stan just as he was about to scream like a little girl.

"What?" Stan whirled around and stepped back from the molesting blond.

"Just watch Kyle for a sec." Kenny still used the hushed tone of voice. He pointed behind Stan and over his shoulder. Stan gave a skeptical look, but turned anyway.

He nearly died of a nosebleed right then and there.

Why you might ask?

Because just a few meters in front of him, Kyle was on the floor doing yoga. Fucking yoga! Oh, and not just any sort of yoga. Kyle was deeply entranced with her yoga, hands and feet planted firmly on the floor while arching her spine into a rounded shape. Kyle's ass was high in the air, and with her cloak in a crumbled heap on the floor next to her, Stan could see ever curve of those magnificent twin globes of flesh for the greatness that they were.

Earlier he had believed that they were all wearing the same loose-fitting pants, but now he was calling into question just how unbelievably snug those pants were. Because seriously, just how tight were they on Kyle's butt?

Dear God, there should be laws against possession of such perfect ass!

"And this is why I always meditate with Kyle," Kenny purred with a longing sigh. Words could not serve Stan at the moment, so he merely nodded.

"The thing Kyle is doing… besides giving us boners and thoughts to fondle ourselves to later…" Kenny started again after clearing his throat and perhaps his head as well, "…is called Arch Pose. It's one of those stretching meditation exercises which is sort of like Moving Mediation."

"I think I get Moving-whatever," Stan said, fully aware that he was still staring at Kyle's pert ass.

"Good. Now then, the aspect of Control is taught to us as younglings as a way to open our minds to the Force and establish a base point for further development." Kenny went on with teaching, now standing next to Stan as they both watched their redheaded friend's butt move through poses. "The theme of Control is centered on the ability to control one's own body, as self-control is the starting point for all Jedi teachings. Development of these skills continue throughout our lives as Jedi, as the basics of all other disciplines of Force use begin with Control. It's been proven to help extend the life span and stuff like that."

Kyle moved out of her arch pose and Stan pretended that he was deep in standing introspection when he saw Kyle begin to rise. "Kenny, you perv!"

"Oh, Ky, baby." Kenny cooed back, and Stan did not see what Kyle hit the blond with, but did hear it. Sounded like something was cracked, too.

"The three main things you need to know about Control are this," Kyle held up a hand when Stan returned his attention to the redhead, "Tutaminis is energy absorption. Curato Salva is self-healing. And then there's Altus Sopor to increase your focus on the Force."

Glancing toward Kenny, who was holding the left side of his face in his hand, Stan nodded when the blond shrugged.

"Those are like umbrella terms for the many of the abilities you'll learn to use throughout your time connecting to the Force." Kenny explained as Stan saw a bruise beginning to form on his left cheek. "Moving on then. The next step is Sense, in which you recognize the Force in the universe outside yourself. That'll be where your sensing abilities come from as you broaden the scope of your Control abilities. Sort of like dipping into a deeper understanding of the universe around you. You'll begin to understand that everything in the galaxy is connected by the Force, and that you can feel out that connection at any time you want."

"Sense uses the Living Force to immerse us in the environment around us." Kyle spoke up again, retaking the bed as a chair, "Sooner or later, the Force will begin to feel like an additional sense. You'll become constantly attuned to the undulation of the Force."

"Umm, what does undulation mean?" Stan asked, raising his hand as though he were in an actual classroom.

"It means something like a ripple or wave." Kyle dismissed Stan's limited vocabulary with a wave of the hand, "What I meant is that after a while you'll start to feel the Force ripple or flutter without even actively feeling for it."

"Okay," Stan nodded again as he was beginning to catch onto all this Jedi stuff, "So this sensing power is like a sonar for the Force."

"Exactly!" Kenny exclaimed while Kyle shrugged.

"Uh, close enough." Kyle was smiling though, showing that Stan wasn't too far off or else Kyle would have corrected him with a condescending comment thrown in for good measure.

"The four main things you need to know about Sense are these," Kenny said, holding up the four fingers of his right hand, "Prima Vitae is the power to sense the Force around you and determine its presence through your natural senses. Sight will become Force Sight and stuff like that. Tactus Otium is just, like, the power to know about the past, present, and future."

"Tai Vordrax is a mental technique used to pick up on impressions and traces of information from objects when you touch them. If you're really good at it, you'll be able to divine entire events that surround the object." Kyle explained while Stan wondered if that would be of any use in getting him back home.

"Projected Telepathy is exactly what it implies." Kyle said, rolling his hand from his wrist, "It's the very basic ability to mentally communicate over small or vast distances with other individuals. I would have demonstrated it for you, but…"

Stan swallowed thickly at being reminded of when Kyle tried to help him. It had ended up giving both of them a headache and revealing that some evil bad guy had tried to use Kyle as a medium to get into his brain. That little episode was one of the reasons Stan was letting them teach him all this Jedi stuff in the first place. If he ever came across the person who had used the Force to try and get inside his mind, then he would at least have some kind of way of defending himself.

"Finally is the path of Alter. Alter is the third and most difficult area to master. None of us have mastered it, and we're not even close." Kenny watched Stan as he lowered his hand from his bruised face and backed away a few steps. "It involves your ability to modify the Force and reorganize its energies to suit your purpose."

"It's really advanced stuff," stern Kyle was back again, and was now scowling at Stan as though he had just let the dog pee on the carpet, "Goofing around with that shit will get you and the people caught around you killed. The art of manipulating other objects has to be perfected and honed through intensive training. In fact, we're not even allowed to know most of the knowledge the Order has on Alter abilities because it's taught to Jedi Knights who have already mastered the arts of Control and Sense."

Kenny nodded, equally serious but with a less severe expression than Kyle had, "When we were being informed about the three paths, it was always expressed to us that a successful Jedi Knight needed the power to alter the environment, since without it, we as Jedi could see the Force, but were incapable of manipulating it."

"So who's the best out of you three?" Stan asked the question that had been on his mind for a while now.

"Kyle," Kenny answered immediately, surprising Stan and making Kyle flush with embarrassment. "Kyle here has advanced well into the stage of Sense. In fact, Kyle's probably tried digging through your head a couple of times with telepathy."

"Have not…" Kyle muttered unconvincingly.

"I can do some of the Sense stuff, but my talent lays in… other areas." Kenny said, and Stan saw the rather subtle way Kenny's hand brushed against his utility belt where a magnetic clip should have been from what the two Jedi told him. "Cartman is still struggling with some of the emotional control training, but he's been making real progress under the Master. He's been at only half his normal level of asshole lately!"

"Moving on though," Kyle shot Stan a look just as he was about to ask about lightsabers and other cool Star Wars shit, "The three main things about the Alter aspect are this. The first is telekinesis, which is the power to move things with your mind."

"Secondly is the power to affect minds, which is basically our patent Jedi Mind Trick." Kenny waved his hand around a few times chuckling. Stan was glad that neither could Mind Trick him into doing something, as he was sure the first thing Kyle would do is find out why his mind couldn't be read. Kenny might rape him. Stan actually wasn't sure which would be worst, considering that Kyle might kill him when she finally found out that he was just as clueless as her.

"The last ability is to alter environment, and that's pretty much using the Force to change the nature of the world around you." Kyle made vague hand gestures, rolling hands at the wrist, "You can use it to change temperatures around you or shit like that."

Stan was a little overwhelmed by all the things he could do with the Force, but he would tackle anything they gave him to do. After all, being a Jedi couldn't be all that different from being an athlete, right?

"So what do we do first?" he inquired, but was quickly filled with dread as he caught sight of the fiendish look shared between Kyle and Kenny. Stan gulped hard when the two advanced on him in unison.

* * *

The hologram flickered and the ghostly figures of two individuals appeared in the ship's conference room. The first figure was a woman and the second a male. These two were Jedi apprentice Karen Opt and her new Jedi Master Darren Kendo. The Master studied Karen's image carefully, looking directly at her dark brown eyes. He was glad to see the sensitive human Padawan again. Not only was she a good friend of his dirty blond, eighteen-year-old apprentice, Kenneth McCormick, but ever since the death of her Master Talia Black years ago, the Master found himself feeling protective of her. Karen and Kenneth had both suffered when Talia died, and both still felt the loss. The Master knew Karen had continued her training despite her grief.

" _But she still does not seem herself_ …" he thought. Looking closer, the Master saw that there was something in the girl's eyes that was not quite right. It wasn't the profound sadness he'd grown used to seeing when Karen mourned at the Temple, when the pain was still fresh.

This was something else. It took him a second to recognize the emotion.

It was fear. Karen Opt was afraid.

The question was, of what?

" _Hello and fair greetings to you, old friend and apprentice Eric Cartman_ ," Darren Kendo greeted the team, bowing slightly so that some of his raged long hair fell forward around his shoulders. " _I have heard much about your new learners from my Padawan. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak with you once again, though I am afraid what we will be discussing will not be pleasant_."

The Master frowned slightly as he figured as much. He had been on conference with the Council a week ago and was still messaging between himself and them every few days. Nobody had told him why he and his new apprentices were to meet Karen and Darren. Since Darren Kendo was contacting him from the largely overlooked planet of Tatooine, the Master had at first assumed that the task would be routine. It only took one look at his old friend Darren's expression to know that this would not be so.

The Sith, he thought with his scowl deepening. He had heard stories about the Sith since he was a young boy. Every generation of initiates at the Temple knew Sith stories and legends. They thrilled in telling them to one another late at night when they should have been sleeping. His generation had been no exception.

Although the stories were terrifying enough to have kept his younger-self awake on more than a few nights, he had always felt that they were largely invented. Simply myths designed to scare, but not inform. Even after studying Sith history and learning that the Sith had existed and had been powerful, he had remained skeptical.

But the conversation that was now being shut off from himself and Jedi Master Darren Kendo forced him to reexamine his beliefs about the Sith.

"Do you really think—" Cartman scoffed.

"Do I believe in the Sith?" the Master finished his apprentice's question before answering it. Even through his haughty expression, the Master could clearly see that Darren's report had opened up questions for the boy as well. And would undoubtedly open them for Kyle and Kenneth, too. "Of course I do. We as Jedi have studied their history enough to know that the Sith threat was once a very real and very dangerous existence. But we also know that they were a culture that could not survive. They killed themselves off long ago."

The question remaining was whether or not they pose a current threat. Now it was his time to scoff.

"Master Kendo must be crazy," Cartman muttered with his arms crossed, "How can they pose a threat if they no longer exist?"

"The danger lies not in the Sith themselves, but in their teachings, and the ability of those teachings to inspire others to evil." The Master dispensed his wisdom with humble grace. It would not do well to smirk down at his students every time he, Kyle, Kenny said something profoundly stupid. "As long as the Sith _teachings_ survive, there is a potential threat."

"And if someone is spreading those teachings…?" Cartman trialed off curiously, but the Master saw fast through his thinly veiled emotions. He knew that the boy was thinking about what Darren Kendo and Karen Opt had found on Korriban and then tracked all the way back to Tatooine. How could he forget the look in his old friend's dark eyes as he told them about the dwelling they had found… and its chilling contents? Or the look of silent terror on Karen's face as she was made to describe the horrors she and her new Master had seen in the valley on Korriban?

Inside the crude shack were tomes of Sith lore and models of ancient Sith weapons. It appeared that someone had been compiling every scrap of information to be found about the Sith, both truth and myth. And scrawled on one wall was a crude drawing of a Sith Holocron beside a message written in Sith code. Location known. Follow the leader.

A simple Holocron was not necessarily dangerous. The crystal information storage devices were even used by the Jedi. Palm-sized and easy to transport, Holocrons were an excellent way to store vast amounts of knowledge for future generations to prosper from.

But the Jedi Holocrons that Cartman had seen were square. The Holocron drawing on Korriban was pyramid-shaped, a formation unique to the Sith from what they learned about their dark-sided enemy. And the knowledge contained in a Sith Holocron was infinitely more dangerous. It focused on dark power and how to gain, use, and manipulate it.

If one existed, and if it fell into the wrong hands, a Sith Holocron could be more than deadly. Of this, Eric Cartman was sure.

"They've dug up knowledge of several Sith Sects operating in the galaxy," Cartman felt the need to voice his thoughts aloud to the Master. "The Jedi monitor them and Master Darren has even interrogated a few himself, but until now those sects have never given us much cause for alarm. They've never gained large followings, and their activities aren't unlike those of other small criminal groups. They've just always been more of a nuisance than a threat."

The Master allowed himself a small smile. Though it had taken him a little while to get used to working with the plump teenager, Eric Cartman was beginning to grow on him. He had come to appreciate Cartman's straightforward manner. The boy had never failed to provide the Master with a healthy dose of skepticism and new perspective in information he needed.

"Yes, but lately there has been increased activity at one of the higher learning institutions on Coruscant," the Master took over, "And according to our sources, this is due to a professor named Murk Lundi."

Cartman brought up an image of the Quermian professor onto a screen. It was not the first time the Master had heard of Professor Lundi. An infamous galaxy historian, Lundi was popular with students and admired by his colleagues. The Master had even heard this man called one of the finest historians of the era. But from the look on Cartman's face, the brown-haired apprentice did not understand what Lundi had to do with the dwelling found on Korriban and later Tatooine.

"For the past several years Lundi has been narrowing his focus," the Master explained for the benefit of his student. "Now all of his research and lectures revolve around the dark side of the Force. As his focus has narrowed, his student following has grown." Taking over at the panel, the Master brought up images of several student texts for Cartman to see. There were posters for Sith rallies and hand-drawn story strips showing Sith battles.

"So his classes are among the most popular on campus." Cartman joked with a sneering expression.

"Indeed," the Master chuckled dryly, "His texts are so sought after they are difficult for students to obtain."

Cartman paused for a moment. "But, I'm guessing that evidence Master Kendo and Karen found led them to him?"

"You're quite perspective when you want to be." The Master complimented, which he knew was going straight to Cartman's ego. "Yes, there were several of these texts among the items found on Korriban."

So that's it, Cartman thought. The Council thought perhaps one of Professor Lundi's followers gathered the information that was found on Korriban. Cartman looked up to find the Master already gazing at him knowingly.

Neither of the Jedi needed to say a word. Their next move was already clear. It was time for some meditation and reflection, and a crash-course on the Sith before reaching Tatooine in a few days.

* * *

Stan awoke from his sleep that night with a sudden start. Something was not right. Sitting up quickly, he glanced around to try and find the source of the danger he felt. When he was sure that there was no one in his room besides himself and Kenny, he sighed with relief and dropped back down onto his bed.

In the corner of the room Kenny sat up against the wall. His breathing was steady, either asleep or deep in meditation. Stan would probably never know. Whatever had disturbed him did not seem to be upsetting Kenny in the slightest, but even as the feeling of alarm drained from him, it did not disappear completely.

Something was not right. Of that, Stan Marsh was sure.

Stan lay back and closed his eyes to try and recapture an image of what had frightened him out of his sleep. Had it been a dream? A presence? Just a feeling?

Pyramid-shaped glowing crystals floated in his mind. Certainly it was disturbing to think that he had never seen of these things before, and yet they were so vivid now in his mind's eye. But he did not think that was what had awakened him.

The items faded from his mind, and another image grew. Figures. His family? There was a man and woman, and then a girl. Stan allowed his fear to grow with the image. Then he relaxed and let the fear go, focusing on the figures. But no matter how he tried, he could not see their faces. They waved and muddled voice called out to him as the visage remained in shadow and mist.

When Stan surfaced from his daydreamed meditation, he saw that Kenny was awake and had been aware of his agitation.

"It was a warning," Kenny said before Stan had even opened his mouth. "Kyle has things like that, too. Sees stuff in dreams and thoughts suddenly come and go. I've seen Kyle twitch like you were just now. So it's a sign that we'll have to be extra cautious."

Stan wanted to laugh Kenny off as a crazy nutcase. Him? Stan Marsh? Having visions of something evil? A week ago Stan might have even punched someone like Kenny for suggesting such a thing. But that was a week ago, and a week ago Stan had not received training in order to lift things with his mind or surround himself with the energy that molested all things in the universe.

"Follow me," Kenny said at once, getting down to business as he got up to his feet, "We're not gonna get much sleep, so we might as well start you on the next part of your training. If things get dangerous down on Tatooine in a few days' time, I want you prepared to either fight with us, or run like hell to safety."

Stan nodded and moved quietly down the corridor as he followed Kenny's quick stride.

* * *

The blade of the lightsaber hissed through the air. Stan could not see its green flash through the blindfold pressing on his eyes. He used the Force to know precisely when to duck. The searing heat of his opponent's saber blade slashed overhead, nearly burning him. The air smelled like an overly hot summer's day.

"Good!" Kyle called from the sidelines of the room. "Let go! Let your feelings guide you. Trust in the Force!"

The words of encouragement spurred Stan onward. Stan was tall and strong for a guy his age. In a normal fight, he'd be kicking ass. But strength and size counted for nothing where agility and speed were needed the most. Nor did they have any effect on the Force that he had not yet mastered. Stan waited for the next strike, listening intently for the sound of Kenny's lightsaber, for his mouthy breathing, for the scrape of a shoe against the floor. Such sounds echoed loudly in the small, high-ceilinged metallic chamber. A random jumble of blocks on the floor added another element to the exercise. He had to use the Force to sense those, too.

"Behind you, Stan!" Kyle warned, "Keep your guard up and focus on the present!"

Stan obediently raised his weapon and rolled to his right as Kenny's blade slammed down into the floor beside him. He took a small leap back, clearing a pile of blocks. Stan heard the sing of the lightsaber as Kenny attempted a hasty strike motivated by ingenuity and impatience. Sweat trickled underneath the blindfold, making Stan's eyes sting. He blocked it out, along with his anxiety at what would happen if Kenny managed to hit him with his apparent clumsiness.

The training toward Jedi-hood was far easier for Stan than he had thought it would be. In a matter of days he had become geared to feeling the unseen energy of the galaxy, his every muscle attuned to the Force. It moved through him, giving him the agility and speed that he needed.

Stan swung his blade up to block the next blow. Kenny's lightsaber hummed and whirled down.

"Jump, you idiot!" Kyle snapped, and Stan leapt high, somersaulting over his attacker's head without thought but reaction. He thrust his lightsaber down where he felt the pulse when he could not see it.

"Aargh, shit!" Kenny howled in anguish as Stan's hot blade stabbed at the side of his neck. Dammit, if they had been using sabers at full power, then that would have been a killing blow. But for the purposes of this exercise they had both been given training lightsabers set to low power by Kyle from the Master.

Stan was not informed about this however, so Kenny was a little pissed that the blue-eyed wonder boy was trying to kill him halfway through practice. The touch of the blade only gave a searing kiss, one that a healer might need to tend. The dirty blond Padawan was ten seconds away from ramming his real lightsaber up Stan's asshole.

"That was good, but it looked to me like a lucky blow." Kyle commented from the sidelines.

Until this moment, Kyle had been doubtful to the level of confidence Kenny placed in Stan's training. Sure the raven-haired guy had taken to the Force like a fish to water, but now Kyle was beginning to see just what had Kenny so close to creaming his pants over Stan's progress. It was preposterous! Stan was quickly learning skills and abilities that had taken Kyle and Kenny and Cartman years to accomplish through instruction and guidance in the Jedi academy on Coruscant. He was running faster than they did after having three years of intense survival drills. Jumping higher than Cartman could, even with the Force enhancing Eric's leaps. Stan had a growth rate and learning curve that was fast becoming a terrifying aspect should they not train him properly to resist the dark side.

Hopefully, Stan would never fall to such temptation…

"Kenny, goddammit!" Kyle called out hotly, stomping a foot to the metal floor, "Leave your blindfold on! This is as much practice for you as it is for him. A Jedi shouldn't need to see with his eyes."

"But that shit hurt, Kyle!" Kenny argued, and Stan heard the blond's blindfold slap to the ground. "I'm done! Tag out!"

Kyle looked at Kenny for a long pause, and then nodded. Kenny looked exhausted with the spar as it had gone on for almost an hour now. Stan was likely more exhausted, but they couldn't afford to coddle him when both knew about the main reason for their heading to Tatooine. Kyle had hoped not to step up, instead allowing Kenny to give all the physical training. Kyle had hoped to remain on the sidelines while giving out pointers. But, after some thought, that didn't sound fair. Kyle was an even worst lightsaber duelist than both Kenny and Cartman. If anyone needed this exercise the most, it was Kyle.

Fuck, Stan was probably somewhere around the redhead's level of expertise in this area right about now, and this was just his first lesson!

"All right, all right! I'll tag in." Kyle relented while stepping forward. The green ignited blade was passed on from Kenny, who looked relieved. "I need the practice more than anyone right now. Just don't go easy on me. Hear that, Stan?"

Stan nodded with the blindfold still up, his blue saber still lit and held at the ready position to continue. He accepted this with an awkward feeling in the pit of his stomach. The redhead girl simply had to know how dead tired he was. Stan wanted a reprieve from the sparring, but apparently that wasn't going to happen. Though, he'd be lying if he said that the blood in his veins wasn't racing with excitement at the thought of another round. It was way cooler to be fighting an actual Jedi with a real lightsaber than to be messing around with his dorky cousin, beating each other senseless with a couple of old broomsticks.

He pushed away his fatigue, willing his muscles to obey. He tried to forget that he was fighting a girl now, or that she had the potential to kill him if given the chance. He concentrated instead on the Force, which he could sense flowing around him, within him. He felt molested in ways he had never thought possible before connecting with the invisible source of power. In the living Force he could feel Kyle, the steady ripples caused by Kyle's concentration while preparing to duel him. Stan's senses were working like sonar through the Force, and flashes of Kyle passed through his mind's eye. He felt more than saw Kyle assume a defensive stance. Stan shrugged as he lunged at the redhead. He let the Force guide him as it had done earlier. Kyle blocked his blow easily, and then tried to counter. Stan ducked under the searing blade, and rolled away along the cold metal floor.

Lightsabers smashed together, sputtering and burning, then whisked apart. Kyle jumped high to avoid a strike from Stan, but Stan came after the redhead. The air felt thicker, clogged with the energy of the battle. For long minutes, the two students fought as if in a graceful dance. Kyle would leap away from every attack and block every jarring blow. It was like Kyle was not trying to hit Stan. Almost as though taunting him into further swinging only to miss. Reckless action.

Kyle was not at all clumsy, from what Stan could feel. Kyle felt graceful and flexible in the Force. Kyle was not stupid. In this fight Kyle moved with every action taking purpose to further obtain victory. But if there was one thing Stan was fast learning…

Kyle was predictable. Kyle was making the same methodical movements and strikes over and over again. Sweat began to drench Stan's clothes. His muscles burned. He could hardly breathe fast enough to get the air his lungs needed. But he was not frustrated or reckless, and the Force remained strong with him. Dueling against Kyle, Stan did not need to think about the fight. Kyle's method of rinse and repeat was a well trotted dance to him by now. He lost himself in that dance. Slash to the left from Kyle. Let the redhead step backward on the left foot to get out of range of his counterattack. Roll to the side of the right overhead blow. Then jump overhead as Kyle tried to press an advantage just before nearly scoring a strike of his own with his backward stab from wherever he landed. Soon the redhead was weary as well. Kyle fought slower and slower as they hit a crescent in the swordplay. Soon, Stan did not even need to leap away from Kyle's drained attacks. He merely blocked them, until finally Kyle was heaving deep breaths.

"That's it…" Kyle backed away, nearly stumbling, from Stan's last slash at the left side. Kyle's lungs and throat were burning. "I'm done…"

"We're done?" Stan could not have been more thankful. He dropped to the floor and sprawled out while his chest heaved up and down for air. Kenny summoned the training saber to him and deactivated it.

"Yeah, man." Kenny smiled brightly down at where Stan was collapsed, "You did really good. Hell, you're a natural. Almost as if you'd been at this as long as we have."

"He's definitely learning," Kyle called out from somewhere beyond Stan's sight, "Let him go ahead and keep the saber. He's earned it. We'll just tell the Master that we broke it over your head, Kenny."

"Alright. Fair call." Kenny grinned, visibly amused that such a situation was indeed possible. Stan stood and Kenny showed him how to work the lightsaber, turning it on and then off before demonstration how to clip it to Stan's utility belt. Stan switched off his new lightsaber and hung it on his belt. He used the blindfold he had been wearing to wipe the sweat from his face and neck. Glancing over to the side, Stan saw that Kyle was there, doubled over and panting like a dog in heat.

"This is another lesson to learn." Kenny said, and Stan turned to him. The blond Jedi was grinning again. "Jedi aren't invincible. We get tired, just like everything else in the galaxy. You don't have to try and kill everything you come across with your new lightsaber, Stan. You can overcome greater obstacles with honor and respect for life than with violence and rage."

Stan understood what Kenny meant. "It's sort of like saying we can kill people with kindness."

"That's…" Kenny and Kyle shared a hesitant look between themselves, "…one way of putting it, I suppose. Is that a common phrase from your planet?"

"Yeah, a little bit." Stan shrugged, his hand fiddling with the new laser sword on his belt. This was gonna be so fucking awesome! He was a real Jedi now! Stan could hardly believe it.

"But you really are learning," Kyle repeated, this time smiling into the air, "Stan, I foresee you'll be a great Jedi in short time."

Behind the three exhausted trainees, a voice cut through their good cheer with a harsh condensing laughter.

"Don't get your panties all up in a twist over a little skill, Kahl." Cartman's cruel mocking tone floated into their ears like an enraged bee. "We all know how I'm the only one with any real talent at being a Jedi. If that scruffy-looking nerf-herder wants some honest feedback on his skill, then he'll have to beat me."

"Well, leave it to you to wait until we're all too tired to give you a real worthwhile ass-kicking." Kenny growled as he and the others turned to the final apprentice of the three.

Eric Cartman.

* * *

Stan was always described by the people around him as a very handsome young man. He possessed a pair of startlingly clear cerulean blue eyes, and dark raven hair which fell in a naturally boyish and youthful way of framing his face. For as long as he could remember, he had been doing sports. It didn't matter what the sports were, but he did them all. Baseball, basketball, football, soccer, hockey, fencing, karate, rugby, polo. If it was played in South Park, Stan was at least one of the key players. All the activity had given him an admirable build, making him very fit, muscular, and lean. However, that wiry frame was hidden at the moment by the slack nature of his desert brown Jedi clothing.

Kyle was rather slender with sharp jade-colored eyes and curly auburn hair which mostly hid underneath a lime green ushanka. Kyle also possessed a soft complexion and sharp, pointed features. Around the bridge of Kyle's nose were a small patch of five cute little freckles that clustered together. Stan found them amazing. Honestly, Stan thought Kyle was rather hot all over. Especially in the snug earthy dark green Jedi robes.

Kenny was a shabbier and taller male than Stan. He was not fit like Stan, but rather sinewy and trim like a swimmer while Stan appeared more as a runner. Kenny had unkempt dishwater blond hair and pure crystal blue eyes. He was tall and thin, in possession of sparkling white teeth and a near permanent sneaky look set upon his eyebrows. Kenny's robes were a terracotta color of orange with scuff marks and patch jobs that suggested to Stan that the blond didn't take good care of his clothes like Kyle obviously did.

Cartman, however, was quite the contrast from them. He was a rather beefy boy with medium-brown hair and a double-chin. He had thick dark eyebrows that made his face seem even heavier. Cartman's eyes were a dark brown and around his mouth were little creases. Cartman had to be at least three times Stan's size and only a few inches shorter than him. Cartman was just as hefty as he was brawny. His robes were dark and his tunic appeared to be made of synthetic black leather. Around his wrists were shiny silver gauntlets that looked new and expensive.

"There's only one way you're gonna learn anything," Cartman lifted his double-chin arrogantly while Kenny and Kyle scowled at him. As Stan stared at him, the fat boy unclipped his laser sword and powered it up. The blade was red and it came to life in a snap-hiss that Stan was fast becoming familiar with hearing. The red saber cut through the dim gloom of the lowly lit training room.

"Dude…" the word was slow from Stan's mouth. He didn't know much of Star Wars, but he did know that all the bad guys used red lightsabers. Vader had used one, and if this fat sack of crap started shooting out lightning from his fingers, Stan was going to start running like hell.

"What's wrong, Stanley Marsh?" Cartman had a singing tone to his voice now, mocking Stan with false sweetness, "You're not scared to fight me, are you? I'll only kick your pansy ass a little bit. Just enough for you to learn your lesson."

Stan raised an eyebrow, but took his lightsaber from its clip after a moment of difficulty where Kenny had to help him. He then ignited the blue saber and took his stance. He was not about to be defenseless. "Oh yeah? Learn what lesson? Because right now you sound more like a pussy than some teacher, guy."

Cartman smiled sweetly. "Why, the lesson is who your better is, of course!"

With that said, Cartman leapt toward Stan with a quickness that betrayed his portly frame, his lightsaber held high over his head. Stan jumped forward to meet the brown-haired fatass with a war cry on his lips. In a span of a second the two were dueling. Their flashing blades clashed in a burst of light and buzzing sound as the boys met in the room's center. Weary as Stan was, he would fight until he could hardly move. Cartman's red lightsaber cracked and hissed as Stan desperately tried to parry with his own. For the third time in less than two hours he was fighting a Jedi, locked in combat, grunting and struggling. His muscles ached. Sweat drenched his thick tunic.

Cartman's toughness surprised him. The boy fought like a demon was at his back with a whip. He fought desperately yet with trained measure, as though his life depended on it. Stan realized this was different than fighting Kenny, who seemed to make up moves as he went along, or Kyle, who followed a set pattern of patent-proven practices.

No, Cartman used something different. Cartman used his emotion. He battled with fear of losing in his every precise saber strike. He struggled with anger at every parry Stan made. But still Stan matched him. Stan would match Cartman's toughness with his own, and then push even harder. He would not stand for this giant douchebag to bully him.

Cartman's blade hummed as it angled toward Stan's throat. A touch there would be a killing blow, and Stan would be rolling on the floor without his head, unlike Kenny who took such a strike with only a hissy fit. A cry rose up from the two spectating Jedi learners in the background. Kyle and Kenny were likely watching the fight with trepidation. Stan could not see them, only hear their shouts of encouragement, or their squeaks of fear. If Stan fell to Cartman it would signal something. Stan didn't know what, but he knew it was inherently bad.

He could not lose here.

"You're not looking so hot, Stanley." Cartman cooed softly enough that the others could hear him over the sizzle of their deadlocked saber blades. "Maybe you need a break. Give up now, and you can preserve some dignity. You _know_ you can't win."

Cartman's brown hair was sticking to his forehead, and sweat stood out in droplets on his brow. The odor of burned flesh and singed hair hung heavily in the air. Both warriors had managed to hit one another, but the touches so far had not been firm strikes.

"Don't listen to that fat-ass, Stan," Kyle shouted out with surprising openness, contrasting the earlier cool behavior that was displayed by the redhead. "You're doing really well!"

Kenny gave Stan much encouragement through wolf whistles and cat calls.

"Maybe you should be the one to give up, porky." Stan countered with a rueful smile as their lightsabers tangled and sizzled. "The way you keep sweating, you're starting to look like a glazed ham."

Cartman's face was close, and his eyes glared at Stan with an emotion bordering on hate. The moment stretched, extended. In Cartman's eyes Stan saw a future mapped out for him, a future in which anger ruled him and he began to hate all who opposed him. Stan reached out for the Force. He felt it flow around him, but he could not fully grasp it while he fought Cartman. While the Force was vital at the moment, it was not prominent to this battle. Emotion was needed more than anything else to defeat a person like Cartman.

Here was a boy who mocked him without knowing him, who insulted him without rhyme or reason. Cartman was a cruel and nasty boy simply for the sake of being cruel and nasty.

Stan pushed against Cartman and saw the surprise in the boy's eyes as he fell backward. He took advantage of Cartman's sudden uncertainty to aim a sizzling attack at his face. Cartman ducked and slashed at Stan's feet. Stan barely leapt into the air in time. As Stan parried Cartman's next attack and the ones that came afterward, he felt eyes on him.

The eyes of someone near, but also far…

The eyes of the mysterious Master who Kenny and Kyle spoke were upon Stan's back.

* * *

The Master watched with clinical interest as the blue-scanned images of Eric Cartman and the mysterious Stan Marsh engaged in a preposterous sparring match turned chaotic, using techniques well beyond their expertise with their unconscious deepening into the Force.

"The little fools," he said slowly, meditatively, as he spoke only to himself, "That porky boy is almost an embarrassment to the Order with the way this fight is going. And this enigmatic boy has grasped the Force with both hands and had ridden it like some cheap Twi'lek slut."

No voice or whisper answered him back. The Master broke out in a single sigh. Things were quickly becoming overly complicated with that strange boy's presence.

"Thankfully, these are embarrassments I can and will survive." He spoke again to himself, still watching the holographic feed from their fierce spar. Watching as the two youths battled it out, the Master felt every hour of age upon him. But he would sit this one out and keep his reputation for integrity and mysticism fully intact amongst the three students he now possessed.

The two boys had broken away from each other in a classic case of both becoming too exhausted to be near the other. The Cartman lad never gave the mysterious Stanley Marsh his back. His blade still held ready to fight and his stout, meaty frame was frozen with anticipation and slight trepidation, so motionless he almost seemed to shiver. It was truly pathetic. It was an insult to call this tubby boy a Jedi at all.

Yet the Marsh boy now… He was something else entirely. He simply watched Cartman for his next move, hands open even as the blade pointed off to the side. The youth was utterly relaxed, on his face only an expression of mild interest in the curiosity of if Cartman would attack him again sooner rather than later. The Master derived a certain melancholy introspection at how he reflected on the stance being one a Jedi Master such as himself might take when dealing with a wild beast. It was more of a pleasurable contemplation of his own greatness than praise at the boy who could not even be called Jedi yet. The Marsh boy would never understand how all of this was the Master's design. Never understand how much thought and planning, how much work, was invested in so hastily orchestrated a sham.

He knew that Kenneth and Kyle would take to the boy. That they would see what he had felt from the moment the boy sudden appeared on their ship. He knew they would share with him the knowledge of the Jedi and the Force.

No, this Stan Marsh character would never understand that even now he was being manipulated toward greatness.

The same way he would never know that it had been the Master who tried to read his mind that time through use of his puppet student, Kyle.

But thus was life. Sacrifices were always made for the greater good.

The Master called upon the Force, gathering it to himself and wrapping himself within it. He breathed it in and held it whirling inside his heart, clenching down upon it until he could feel the spin of the galaxy around him. This was the real power those four children were merely playing at when they attuned themselves to the Force. A power he had suspected even as a boy. One he had sought after in his long life until he had been shown that it had been his all along.

Now the scene of blue-scanned images subtly altered, though to the physical eye there was no change. Powered by the Force, the Master's perception took the measure of the two quarreling boys with exhilarating precision.

Stan Marsh was luminous, a transparent being as he opened himself to the Force like a newborn suckling at the teat of his wet-nurse. And like a newborn, Stan was trusting and curious of the Force as he allowed it to fill him. At the moment, Stan was a window onto a sunlit meadow of the Force.

Cartman was a completely different story, however. He was an old hand at the Force, now no longer curious and intrigued, but greedy and covetous of its splendor. He wanted only more of what the Force could do for him. He became a storm cloud, flickering with dangerous lightning, building the rotation that threatened a tornado as he pulled the Force to himself so that it could better service his needs at the moment instead of his opponent.

The Force crackled between them as it was divided. Feeling that scrunch of subtle energy more so than Stan, Cartman must have decided that the time had come. He flicked his lightsaber out as a false hint of attack, and Stan snapped to attention like an obedient dog. The pudgy brown-haired boy made another feint, and both moved at once to meet each other at the middle again for a fresh bout.

The Master watched as Cartman sprang, lightsaber angled for what would undoubtedly have been the kill if not for Stan no longer being where he aimed. Yet, the boy adjusted well to the change in tactics, catching Stan just in time to give the raven-haired beginner a rancor-leather boot to the face. Marsh went tumbling back toward the floor, but he was a fast learner if nothing else. He reached into the Force to almost effortlessly right himself and touched down in perfect balance to spring again toward Cartman, crafting lightning flares as scarlet clashed against ocean blue. Cartman pressed Marsh away with a succession of weaving, flourishing thrusts that drove the novice boy's blade out of line while they reached for his heart.

Evidently, the brunette had deduced Stan's method of attack and was now playing with the boy as he unleashed his true style of battle.

Stan raised his fist, but Cartman snorted while holding him at bay with a one-handed bind. He gestured with his other hand, and Stan's fist smashed him in his own face, causing them to break apart as he was knocked down. The Master could feel Stan's new wave of rage in the Force. The raven-haired youth snarled to himself and reached through the Force to try the same trick, only for Cartman's experience to win out over him as his hand once again smacked him in the face. His lightsaber came loose from his slack fingers and clattered to the floor.

This was almost amusing, the Master thought snidely.

* * *

The battle quickly returned to its previous state of furious swordplay, but at this point Cartman effortlessly deflected the rain of blue-streaked cuts from Marsh.

"My, my, Stanley," Cartman said, chuckling. "You've got a little talent after all."

"You'll see what I'm capable of if you keep pissing me off." Stan growled in return.

"How lovely for you then." Cartman neatly sidestepped an overstretched downward slash, cutting at the boy's leg, yet Marsh's blade met the cut.

Stan drove a slash at the scarlet blade while he pivoted in the air, and again Cartman sidestepped the attack easily.

"Really," Cartman said, now shaking his head while tutting, "this is pathetic. Oh, you're doing well, and you've certainly got endurance and energetics going for you, Stanley, with all your leaping and whirling and random swings, but you lack something all Jedi possess. The graceful methodical way to outmaneuver rookies like yourself. Ya see, Stanny-boy, I run circles around you so thoroughly it's all I can do to keep from laughing out loud. I'm over here countering your depressingly straightforward tactics, but as your superior in the Jedi ways, you'll never hope to defeat me."

Stan only looked at him, his blue eyes narrowed as he charged back at Cartman.

But the meaty boy had a fair point, the Master conceded. The Marsh enigma was a little too predictable. He was swift, whooshing here and there like a spastic hawk-bat when he was on the attack, but when Cartman pressed forth to counter, Stanley shut down and fell into a measured cadence, deliberate as a lumberdroid, moving step by step through Cartman's rain of blows, cutting off the angles when he could try for a counterattack. The raven-haired child was clumsy but relentlessly dogged Cartman as he tried to chivvy the doughtier boy into a corner.

In direct contrast with Cartman, who needed to only slip from one side to another, while Stan occasionally flipped over his head once or twice. The Master supposed that in his own milieu, the mysterious Stanley Marsh might have actually proven reasonably effective. It was clear that his style was developing minute by minute as the fight wore on. Yet, it was proving useless against a Force-user like the sadistic Eric Cartman, who was not fighting to train or help Stanley, but instead to humiliate and demean the Marsh boy at every turn. He drew the raven-haired boy's strikes to his parries, and drove his own responses with thrusts of power that subtly altered Stanley's balance and disrupted his timing. If Cartman had been fighting to kill, he could have murdered Marsh as casually as one swatted a fly in the first ten minutes of their exchange. However, Eric Cartman was a vain and arrogant child who relished the suffering of others. After the half hour mark, he had allowed the battle to go on too long, and it was obviously becoming tiresome. The Force power that served him went only so far, and he was, after all, not the healthiest of Padawan learners.

Cartman leaned into a thrust at Stan's gut that the blue-eyed boy deflected with a rising parry, bringing them chest-to-chest, blades flaring, locked together a handbreadth from each other's throats.

"Your moves are too slow, Stanley. Too predictable. You'll have to do better." Cartman sung smugly. Marsh's response to this friendly word was to regard him with a twinkle of gentle mischief in his eye while his mouth quirked downward into a frown.

"And now you've pissed me off." Stan said, and shot straight upward over Cartman's head so fast it seemed he'd vanished. Kyle and Kenny gasped as he flipped and slashed in midair at Cartman's back. Only a desperate whirl to one side made what would have been a smoking line in his chest into a line of scorch through his robe's long loose sleeve.

* * *

The Master was surprised. What had just occurred?

Cartman threw himself spinning up and away from the novice learner to land far away, disengaging for a moment to recover his smug composure. That had been entirely too close. But by the time his boots touched down on firm metal floor, Stan was there to meet him.

" _The boy's suddenly become faster_!" the Master frowned pensively as he observed the fight.

The raven's blade weaved through a defensive velocity so bewilderingly fast that Cartman dared not even try a strike. The Master saw how the brunette threw a feint toward Stan's face, then dropped and spun in a reverse ankle-sweep. But not only did Marsh easily overleap this attack, Cartman nearly lost his own foot to a slash from the overhead Stan's retaliation. Cartman dropped back away from the blue arch of plasma, unceremoniously plopped onto his fat ass on the floor. This was clearly not in Cartman's plan. When Marsh touched ground and spun on heel, he slammed his following strike down so hard that the shock of deflecting it buckled Cartman's elbows. Eric threw himself into a backroll that brought him to his feet, and Stanley's blade was there to meet his neck. Only a desperate whirling slash-block, coupled with a wheel kick that caught Marsh on the thigh, bought him enough time to leap away again. He got a single breath in before Stan was upon him once more, the first overhand chop of his saber blade sliding off Cartman's instinctive guard. The second bent Cartman's wrist. The third flash of blue forced Eric's scarlet blade so far to the inside that his own lightsaber scorched his shoulder.

Cartman was just forced to give ground.

The Master felt himself blanch. Where had this come from?

The enigmatic Stanley "Stan" Marsh performed now like a completely different person from the one before. He now came on relentlessly, impossibly powerful. His every move seemed to be a step and every step a move. The Master watched as Cartman backed away as fast as possible, but Stan stayed right on top of him. Cartman's breath went short and hard as he no longer tried to block the strikes. No, now he only guided them slanting away.

Stanley was pressing his strength advantage now. The boy was built powerful and firmly, like a runner in the Metuchen races on Vatican VII. For someone like Cartman, that sheer physical power had to be astonishing.

And only then did the Master understand what had happened. The boy's Shien-style type tactics had been a ruse from the very beginning as had some of his Ataro-like gymnastics. The boy was a Djem So stylist, and as fine a natural one as the Master had ever seen. Sure, it was rather rough and unrefined, but they could work out the kinks of it in the years to come. Cartman's own elegant Makashi simply did not generate the kinetic power to meet Djem So head-to-head, especially not while also defending against the second style of fighting young Stanley Marsh was bringing to the fight.

But still, Cartman was not a Jedi Padawan for nothing. He too was beginning to see the change in Stan's maneuvers for what it was. And like a true Jedi, Cartman adapted to new information with openness and took advantage. The brunette dropped low and spun into another reverse ankle sweep. From years of academic learning, the methods to outdo Stanley were probably diagramed along the inside of the fat boy's skull. The weakness of Djem So maneuvers were their lack of mobility. Cartman slapped Stanley's boot sharply enough to throw the young enigma off balance, giving him the opportunity to leap away.

However, Stanley merely flipped with the motion and leapt anew at Cartman with his blue saber flashing downward.

The Master felt a new twist in the currents of the Force between the two students that he had previously ignored as some far off occurrence. He finally understood. He understood how Stanley fought on par with his students. Why he no longer seemed to smile or even breathe. How he had become a machine of battle. He understood why the Force had sent the boy to them and why Kyle and Kenny were so interested in him from the beginning while he had written the boy off as a mere hiccup made by the intangible life energy of the universe. Stanley "Stan" Marsh was a natural Jedi the likes of which the Master had only seen once before in his lifetime. This boy had the gift of athletics, which apparently translated to even the Jedi arts of lightsaber combat and Force use.

And even now, he was holding himself back. Even now, as he landed at Cartman's flank and rained blows upon the tubby Padawan's defenses. Even as he drove Eric backward step after step was the Marsh youth holding himself in spare.

The Master had once been an apprentice himself. He had fenced other Jedi and turncoats thousands of times, and he knew every weakness of every formalized style that existed to the Jedi Order. Stan was using a secondary style of Ataro form, with its ridiculous acrobatics. The Master preferred the elegance and sophistication of Makashi himself, but that was his own opinion. Cartman drove a series of flashing thrusts toward Marsh's legs to draw the raven-haired boy into a flipping overhead leap so that he could carve his spine in twain. But Cartman failed to notice the way Stan was now meeting every one of his thrusts without so much as moving his feet, staying centered and balanced. Blade never moving any more than was necessary, deflecting almost without effort, riposting with flickering strikes and stabs swifter than most Padawans should be able.

Then the Master saw Cartman's face hit recognition as did his other student Kenny while young Kyle had figured it out almost as quickly as the Master himself. Kyle was such a bright one. Those other two could learn a thing or two from the redhead's observational skills.

Cartman finally registered the source of that blinding defensive velocity Stanley had used a moment ago before breaking off and away. Soresu, and a damn decent impression of it at that. Cartman must have been distressed by this and indeed did the Master feel the weighty boy's anxiety in ripples of the Force.

The game had suddenly, inexplicably, spun on young Eric. It went from humorous to deadly serious and was tumbling rapidly toward terrifying.

* * *

Realization burst through Cartman's consciousness like flames from a Menagerie dragon. Stan Marsh had somehow managed to become an entirely dangerous adversary. The novice clown might, just possibly, actually be able to _beat_ _him_.

No sense taking chances, even the Master would agree with that. He gathered the Force once more in a single indrawn breath that summoned power from throughout the universe; the slightest whipcrack of that power, negligent as a flick of his wrist, sent a surprised Stan flying backward to crash hard against the wall.

But apparently Cartman didn't have time to enjoy it. Kenny's shining green lightsaber whirled and spat against him as Cartman was faced with the outraged blond's fury.

"The fuck was that, Cartman!" Kenny snarled as every overhand chop crashed against Cartman's defense with the unstoppable power of a meteor strike. Kenny was all over him. "It was all fine when it was just lightsabers being swung around, but using the Force like _that_! The fuck is wrong with you! This is his first day training to fight!"

And Kyle was not simply standing around either, even though the redhead had yet to ignite the green saber Cartman knew was there or to speak a single word. Kyle was wasting no time in limiting the drawn powers around them. With total concentration, Kyle was focusing in on Cartman and forcing the brunette to fight to keep his head clear from the telepathic assault. However, Kyle's plan was working. Each parry cost Cartman more power than he'd used to throw Stan across the room. He no longer even tried to strike back. Kyle's mental assault was beginning to close down his perceptions. It was a rare skill, one that Kyle possessed and was using to full effect in order to draw Cartman's consciousness back down to his physical form, trapping the brunette within his own skull until he could barely even feel the contours of the room around him. Cartman dimly sensed Stan stirring at his back.

He leapt across the room, but Kenny jumped with him and just kept on coming, tirelessly ferocious in his righteous anger. That green blade was everywhere now, flashing and whirling faster and faster until Cartman saw the room through an electric haze.

And great, now Stan was back in the picture. Just fantastic!

Before the two could even think to work in tandem with each other, Cartman was in motion, landing a spinning side-stamp that folded Kenny in half. He used his last burst of Force power to continue his spin into a blindingly fast wheel-kick that brought his heel against the point of Kenny's chin with a crack, knocking his fellow Jedi learner back toward Kyle's side. Sounded like he'd broken his neck. Wouldn't that be lovely? And thankfully the redhead stopped hampering him in order to focus on McCormick's welfare. This was something Eric found extremely agreeable.

Now, as for little Stanley—

Which was as far as Cartman got, because by the time his attention returned to the young rookie Jedi, his vision was rather obstructed by the sole of a boot approaching his face with something resembling terminal velocity. The impact was a blast of white fire, and then the room turned upside down and he fell toward the ceiling. But not really, of course. It only felt that way because he had been sent sailing from the force of that kick and he was falling headfirst toward the floor. Neither his arms nor his legs were paying any attention to what he was trying to make them do. The Force seemed to be busy elsewhere, and the whole process was entirely mortifying. He was barely able to summon a last surge of power before what would have been a disabling impact. The Force cradled him, cushioning his fall and setting him on his feet. He dusted himself off and fixed a contemptuous gaze on Stan, who now stood like a pillar of stone with the expression etched onto his pitiless face. Cartman couldn't even hold the stare. He found it oddly unsettling. There was something troublingly appropriate about the look of callous passion to Stanley. As though all the darkness in the world had bowed at the raven's feet and Cartman was now in his domain instead of the reversal. He pushed this aside, drawing once more upon the certain knowledge of his personal invincibility to open a channel to the Force. Power flowed into him, and the weight of his size dropped away. He lifted his blade, and beckoned.

The Master had seen ample enough for the moment. Stanley had passed with flying colors.

" _That will be quite enough, students_." His voice flowed from the intercom device that connected the two rooms together. He saw the students and Stan jerk toward his voice in surprise as they all powered off their lightsabers and tried to look innocent. " _The hour is late. Please, return to your rooms and cleanse yourselves. Our arrival on Tatooine will be made shortly in the few days to come. Rest and reflect on your session. May the Force be with you all_."

"May the Force be with you, Master," three students intoned while Stan stood there dumbly, most probably under the impression that the Master could not see him.

" _May the Force be with you, Stanley Marsh_ ," the Master said, and enjoyed the shocked and nearly traumatized expression on Stanley's young face.

"M-May the Force be with you, too, Jedi Master-dude," Stan sputtered out quickly, bowing himself at the middle while the Master shut off the intercom and the hologram feed in order to laugh himself hoarse.

Sometimes, it was simply too good to be the Master…


	3. Mystery of the Multi-Armed Man

**Chapter 3: Mystery of the Multi-Armed Man**

* * *

Shmi Skywalker-Lars stood on the edge of the sand berm marking the perimeter of the moisture farm. She positioned herself primly, one leg up higher, to the very top of the ridge, knee bent. With one hand on that knee for support, the middle-aged woman, stared up at the many bright dots of starlight on this crisp Tatooine night. Her dark hair was beginning to gray as the winds swept over the sands. Her face was worn and tired as she gazed out over the horizon. No sharp edges broke the landscape around her, just the smooth and rounded forms of windblown sand dunes on this planet of seemingly endless sands. Somewhere out in the distance a creature groaned, a plaintive sound that resonated deeply within Shmi this night.

This special night.

Her son Anakin, her dearest little Annie, turned seventeen this night, a birthday Shmi observed each year, though she hadn't seen her beloved child in near a decade.

How different he must be! How grown, how strong, how wise in the ways of the Jedi by now!

Shmi, who had lived all of her life in a small area of drab Tatooine, knew that she could hardly imagine the wonders her boy might have found out there among the stars, on planets so different from this, with colors more vivid and water that filled entire valleys.

A wistful smile widened on her face as she remembered those days long ago, when she and her son had been slaves of the sleazy Watto. Annie, with his mischief and his dreams, with his independent attitude and unsurpassed courage, used to so infuriate the Toydarian junk dealer. Despite the hardships of life as a slave, there had been good times, too, back then. Despite their meager food, their meager possessions, despite the constant complaining and ordering about by Watto, she had been with Annie, her beloved son.

"You should come in," came a quiet voice behind her.

Shmi's smile only widened as she turned to see her stepson, Owen Lars, walking over to join her. He was a stocky and strong boy about Anakin's age, with short brown hair, a few bristles, and a wide face that could not hide anything that was within his heart.

Shmi tousled Owen's hair when he moved beside her, and he responded by draping an arm across her shoulders and kissing her on the cheek.

"No starship tonight, Mom?" Owen asked good-naturedly. He knew why Shmi had come out here, why she came out here so very often in the quiet night. Shmi turned her hand over and gently stroked it down Owen's face, smiling. She loved this young man as she loved her own son, and he had been so good to her, so understanding of the hole that remained within her heart. Without jealousy, without judgment, Owen had accepted Shmi's pain and had always given her a shoulder to lean on.

"No starship tonight," she replied, and she looked back up at the starry canopy. "Anakin must be busy saving the galaxy or chasing smugglers and other outlaws. He has to do those things now, you know."

"Then I'll sleep more soundly from this night forward," Owen replied with a grin.

Though she was kidding, of course, Shmi did realize a bit of truth in her presumption about Anakin. He was a special child, something beyond the norm. Even for a Jedi, she believed. Anakin had always stood taller than anyone else. Not physically, of course, as Shmi remembered him. He was just a smiling little boy, with curious eyes and sandy blond hair.

But Annie could do things, and so very well!

He was the first human ever to win one of the Podraces, and he had been only nine years old! And in a racer that, Shmi remembered with an even wider smile, had been built with spare parts taken from Watto's junkyard. But that was Anakin's way, because he was not like the other children, or even like other adults. Anakin saw things before they happened, as if he was so tuned to the world around him that he understood innately the logical conclusion to any course of events. He could often sense problems with his Podracer, for example, long before those problems manifested themselves in a catastrophic way. He had once told her that he could feel the upcoming obstacles in any course before he actually saw them. It was his special way, and that was why the Jedi who had come to Tatooine had recognized the unique nature of her boy and had freed him from Watto before taking him into their care and instruction.

"I had to let him go," Shmi said quietly. "I couldn't keep him with me, if that meant living the life of a slave."

"I know," Owen assured her. He squeezed her shoulder, holding his stepmother close as they both gazed out over the open horizon.

But still, there remained a deep and empty hole in her heart…

* * *

Stan Marsh, formerly a resident of Earth and the hectic town of South Park certainly wasn't used to traveling by spaceship. The transport they were on, in truth, was nothing more than that. It had accommodation for them, like they're small, but separate rooms and the one cleared for their lightsaber training. However, aside from that it was just some dumpy old cargo ship, with several great open holds more suitable to inanimate cargo than to living beings. The lighting was terrible in some spots and the smell was worse, though whether the odor came from the ship itself or the other passengers Stan did not know.

Nor did he care.

In some ways, Stan was truly enjoying this voyage. He knew that he should be trying harder to find a way back to Earth, playing for his next season's team and doing homework so he could get into a good college, but somehow, he felt relaxed here, felt free.

Free of responsibility. Free to just be Stan Marsh for a while, instead of quarterback and captain of the football team, or perhaps it was baseball season back on Earth where he would be captain and pitcher? Moments such as these were rare for him before suddenly being sucked into an entirely different universe, and had been since he was a child. All of his life, it seemed, had been spent in public sporting competition. All of his focus had always been for the game, the fans, his parents, and his school. Hardly any time ever being given just to Stan, to his needs and his desires.

However, Stan didn't regret that reality of his life. He was proud of his accomplishments, but more than that, even, he felt a profound sense of warmth, of community, of belonging to something greater than himself.

Maybe that was why he took so well to becoming a Jedi fighter?

Still, these moments when any and all responsibility was lifted were undeniably enjoyable. In this moment, Stan was not an athlete nor a Jedi. Nope, he was just Stan Marsh.

Stan looked over at Kyle, who was sleeping somewhat restlessly. He could see her now, not as a Jedi Padawan and his babysitter for the moment, but just as a beautiful young woman. And one whose actions were now repeatedly showing Stan how much the redhead grew to trust him as a friend and fellow Jedi learner. A dangerous girl, to be sure, a Jedi who was thinking about things Stan more than likely couldn't even hope to comprehend. A young woman who was inevitably following the call of her heart in service to the Jedi Order. Stan couldn't deny the attractiveness of that.

He smiled widely and pointedly turned away from Kyle, scanning the gloomy room for signs of their other companions. Stan saw Kenny was in the food line, where he stuck out as the only grinning blond-haired goofball among the narrow roster of living creatures. Stan also spotted Cartman, ahead in the line where servers ladled out bowls of bland-looking mush for today's breakfast, and each being who took one inevitably gave out a low groan of disapproval. Cartman groaned the lowest as he received his bowl of mush, but Kenny whopped with excitement as he began to feverishly chow down on the crud.

"No, no," came a call beside Stan. It was Kyle. Stan turned about quickly, taking in the sight of how Kyle was still asleep, but was sweating and thrashing, obviously in the throes of some nightmare. "Mom, no!"

"Kyle?" he gave the redhead a little shake.

"No, Mom!" Kyle cried, pulling away from Stan. He looked down to to see Kyle's feet kicking, as if the normally calm teen were running away from something.

"Kyle," Stan said again, more forcefully. He shook again, harder. Green eyes blinked open and looked about curiously before focusing on Stan.

"Huh… What?"

"Dude, you were having some kind of fucked-up nightmare!" Kyle continued to stare at him, expression ranging from curiosity to concern. "Umm… Are you hungry?" Stan asked, getting nervous as Kyle simply stared at him, _through_ him. He offered the redhead the bowl of mush in his lap, and Kyle nodded once before taking the food while sitting up, rubbing a hand through auburn hair. Kyle shook her head, probably to clear it of whatever was haunting her sleep, Stan thought.

"How long was I asleep?" Kyle asked, and Stan smiled.

"You had a good nap," he answered. This seemed to please Kyle, who started to smooth the front of her tunic and straightened herself, looking all around, trying to get her bearings.

"I've never been to Tatooine before…" the redhead remarked without preamble and shifted, trying to orient herself. Kyle's expression soured as she looked down at the off-white mush, crinkling her nose as she bent low to sniff it.

"What's it supposed to be like?" but Stan already knew the answer from the movies he had watched with his dorky cousin. Tatooine was hotter than balls and had nothing but a bunch of sand. Half the first part of the first movie had been set on the desert planet.

"The records show it as a desert planet, so it won't be much to look at," Kyle began, looking back to Stan. "I've thought about it every day since the Master accepted the mission to come here. It's by far one of the worst planets you can go to."

"What about your planet?" Stan asked, and Kyle averted jade green eyes back to the bowl of mush. "You were calling for your mother in your sleep. Is she on your home-world, or something?"

"Something like that…" Kyle agreed, and looked up to gauge Stan's expression before continuing, "I'm from the Corellian sector in the Core World region, and my planet there is named Corellia. Corellia is the capital planet of the Corellian system. The other four planets of the system are Selonia, Drall, Tralus, and Talus."

Stan stared at Kyle in awe, because essentially, Kyle was an alien. A human, or at least human-enough looking alien, but an alien none the less. And, as things dawned on him, Stan realized that he, too, was an alien to everyone around him. Hell, they might even thing he was freaky looking with his dark hair and blue eyes. So far none of the people he knew in this galaxy had dark hair like him, and the only other person so far with blue eyes was Kenny.

"Collectively, the planets of the system are known as the Five Brothers. Corellia is the largest planet and the closest to Corell, our sun-star. Corellia is called the Eldest Brother because of it."

"Freaking sweet, dude…" Stan blurted on in awe before he could stop himself. Kyle scrutinized him for a second, but then snorted with laughter. At least Kyle was relaxing now, Stan thought, even if it was at the expense of his embarrassment.

Just to be sure he didn't make a complete fool of himself, he'd better not stare at any aliens for a while…

"You're such a fucking dork, Stan Marsh!" Kyle laughed, and Stan's face flushed red as Kenny and Cartman made their way over. Stan was glad he was now allowed out of his room to see all these odd aliens and robots up-close.

"It must be hard… being a Jedi, that is," Stan said suddenly, taking a different tack to get Kyle off his back.

"Why do you say that?" Kenny asked as he came over and plopped down in front of Stan and Kyle atop a large metal cargo container. Cartman pulled up a stool and made himself comfortable, poking at his mush with a disgusted face.

"I don't know, it just seems like it's hard." Stan shrugged, "Not being able to see your families, or anything. Hell, are you even allowed to marry or have children?"

"Attachment is forbidden," Cartman began, his voice dispassionate, as if he was reciting. "Possession is forbidden."

"But compassion is central to a Jedi's life." Kenny argued, his face unsympathetic as he and Cartman locked eyes, "It's the unconditional love we're supposed to have for all other living and non-living things." Kenny then turned back to Stan, smiling easily. "So, you might say we're encouraged to love."

"You guys are amazing," Stan heard himself saying, and in a tone that seemed inappropriate to him. He was being quite open and honest today. He'd have to stop that. It would only invite trouble or more embarrassment.

"Hey," the four boys looked up as one of the servers began yelling and waving his hand at a trashcan-looking robot, motioning for the droid to move along.

"No droids in the food line!" the server yelled. "Get out of here!"

The little robot started past the counter, but stopped suddenly, and a hollow tube came forth from his utilitarian body, hovering over the buffet and sucking up some of the mush and placing it in a storage container for transport.

"Hey, no droids!" the server yelled again. The robot took another fast gulp of the mush, reached out with a claw arm to grab a piece of bread, then turned and tootled and rushed away, the server shaking his fist and shouting behind him. The droid came fast across the wide floor, veering to avoid the many crew members. The server had cleared his food station, rushing after the droid while it made as straight a line as possible toward the exit.

"I'm gonna turn you into scrap metal, you blasted bucket of bolts!" the server shouted, waving the ladle in his fist like it was a lightsaber. The droid totted again, sounding something like mechanical laughter.

Stan got up, and the droid slammed into him with enough force to make him stumble.

"Hey buddy, what have I told you?" Stan said, doing his best to appear scolding and exasperated, "You're not a person. You don't need food, remember?"

The droid whistled indignantly, probably confused as to who Stan was and why he was fucking up a perfectly good escape. The server caught up to them. "I'm sorry, sir. This is my droid. He has a few loose circuits and thinks he's a person trapped in a droid's body. Sort of like Michael Jackson."

The droid hooted again, and its head whirled as if to say that Stan was crazy and it was in no way affiliated with him.

The server shook his ladle in Stan's face, close enough to see the mushy goop still dripping off it. He snarled at the raven-haired boy with his nose crinkled in outrage. "Well, you better get a handle on that mechanized trashcan before I send it to the junk heap! And because it stole thanks to your negligence, you'll not be getting lunch when it's served before reaching the spaceport."

"Aww, man!" this was upsetting. Stan started to like the weird alien foods that were served on the ship, "You mean no more of those green noodle things? I really liked those, dude."

The server sniffed with indignation, "Those are Progarerian flutterworms, buddy. And you'll not be getting another one from me on this ship!" The server stalked away, back to the food station while muttering under his breath about droids and irresponsible kids.

Meanwhile, Stan's face had tinted green as he reflected on the fact that he had been slurping down worms for the past few days with a gusto he had not shown even his own mother's spaghetti.

"Stan!" Cartman called out sneeringly, "Stop playing with your fag-droid and come look at this!"

After slapping Cartman in the back of the head, Stan leaned over him and Kenny to see what was so urgent outside the window they were all huddled against. From beside him the little droid whistled and beeped. Their starship had long since come out of hyperspace from what Kyle told him, and now they were able to view the brown planet of Tatooine looming before them. How different it was from Earth, a place of green grasses and deep blue water, with cloud patterns swirling all across it. Tatooine was just a ball of brown hanging in space, as barren as Earth was alive.

"Where is your planet, Kenny?" Stan inquired even as none of them took their eyes off the oncoming world-sphere.

"I was born on Nar Shaddaa. It's not a planet, but the planet's moon." Kenny explained without a care in his tone, as though he had long since accepted something about his past, "It a place where the moon's surface is an entire city sprawl. But unlike Coruscant, which you'll see is only rundown and dangerous on the lower and under levels of the world city, Nar Shaddaa is filthy, polluted, and infested with crime everywhere."

"Oh…" Stan was quiet, but knew that he could not be upset for Kenny's past.

"Yup," Kenny shrugged, breaking away from gazing at the planet, "I grew up there for almost six whole years before the Jedi found me and took me into the Order. Best thing anyone's ever done for me."

"Great people like me, on the other hand, come from robust backgrounds." Cartman boasted while holding his double-chin in the air. "My home planet was Serenno, which is out here in the Outer Rim worlds. I chose to come to the Jedi Knights."

"No he didn't," Kyle revealed, looking agitated, "Cartman only came to the Jedi because his mother was a spice-addicted two-credit whore that couldn't support his fat ass! So, when the Jedi stopped off on his world to look for recruits, he came along because they said he would get five square meals a day and become famous."

"Aye!" Cartman snapped back at the redhead, "Don't say that kinda shit about my mother! She was a saint!"

"Your mom was a huge slut!" Kyle shouted.

"And your mom is a big fat bitch!" Cartman were now red in the, and Kenny was holding Cartman back while Stan gently gripped Kyle's arm.

"Stop calling my mom a bitch, Cartman!"

"Stop calling my mom a slut, Kahl!"

"MY NAME ISN'T KAHL, YOU FAT PIECE OF CRAP!"

"YOU'RE NAME IS WHATEVER I WANT IT TO BE, YOU CORELLIAN-RAT BASTARD!"

Kyle tried to throw herself at Cartman, but Stan held fast to the little fireball. He was kicked and slapped and scratched, but Stan still kept Kyle from killing the fat ass. It could get Kyle kicked out of Jedi as far as Stan knew, and he didn't want that for Kyle. The tiny robot behind them whirled its top head around and tootled with mechanical laughter. Cartman, after being punched in the jaw by Kenny a moment later, saw the furious redhead and grew an expression of fright on his face. Kyle was still thrashing and raging, kicking the giant metal boxes and trying to break away from Stan in order to rip Cartman's face off.

"I'm gonna go find the Master…" Cartman muttered with wide eyes as Kyle howled at Stan to let go. He rushed away, his large robes billowing in his hasty retreat while Kenny and Stan turned to Kyle to calm the redhead before she nuclear exploded or something.

"Geez, fire crotch, calm down." Kenny said, waving his arms in front of Kyle. Kyle did not like that, and Kenny was just close enough that Kyle got ahold on him and started beating him with flailing limbs.

"Kyle! KYLE! Jesus Christ, dude, stop! You're gonna kill him!" Stan panicked, pulling Kyle back, but Kyle had a good grip on Kenny's hair and was trying to rip it from his scalp. Kenny howled like a wounded animal, and the other passengers only spared them a momentary glance before returning to their previous activities. The little droid whirled and beeped with laughter, and Stan was sure now that he should have let it be disassembled into scrap metal.

"KYLE! Oh, Christ! Kenny, get away! Wait, Kyle, don't bite his ear! Holy shit, dude! Someone call a doctor!"

* * *

This was Tatooine.

The duo suns burned down out of a cloudless blue sky, washing the vast desert wastes of the planet in brilliant white light. The resultant glare rose off the flat, sandy surface in a wet shimmer of blistering heat to fill the gaps between the massive cliff faces and solitary outcroppings of the mountains that were the planet's sole distinguishing feature. Sharply etched, the monoliths stood like sentinels keeping watch in a watery haze. When the transport broke through the skyline and touched down on the planet's surface, the heat and the light seemed to shatter and the mountains themselves to tremble.

The suns that gave the planet life beat down with such ferocity that it seemed as if they were determined to steal that life back again. Heat rose off the sand in a shimmering wave, and the air was so dry it sucked the moisture from their throat and nose passages. As the Master walked off the ship, he glanced skyward, his neck craning, and his aged face wrinkling in dismay.

"This sun is going to do murder to my skin…" he muttered, flipping his cloak up while his three young apprentices were still getting ready for the trip. He could look around for a while without them getting in his way.

And if he happened upon his old friend, Master Darren Kendo, then they would have to complete the mission while his Padawans learned a lesson in the importance of being ready at a moment's notice.

He strolled down from the lift pad, and some protests did squeal over their ship's spot. They were parked in a large landing bay amid a jumble of vessels of all merchant and mercenary classes.

"You can't just drop in uninvited!" the dock officer barked harshly, a stout creature with a piggish face and spikes running down the length of his back and tail.

"It's a good thing you invited us, then," the Master intoned quite calmly, with a slight wave of his hand.

"Yes, it's a good thing I invited you then!" the officer happily replied, and he walked past without another care.

"I knew I'd find you making trouble," a voice said as he exited onto the dusty street.

"It's not like there are dozens of ships lined up to fill the bay," the Master replied to Darren Kendo, his fellow Jedi Master in the Order and his good friend of many years. To be honest, the Master was feeling pretty good about himself at the moment. He was at ease with the way he had Force-convinced the piggish officer.

Master Kendo shook his head, and waved down a floating rickshaw pulled by an ES-PSA droid, a short and thin creature with a wheel where its legs should have been. Kendo gave it the address and off it went, pulling them behind in the floating rickshaw, charging along the streets of Mos Espa, expertly zigging and zagging to avoid the heavy traffic, and blasting forth a shrill sound whenever someone didn't get out of its way.

* * *

"That unbelievable asshole!" Kenny raged, stomping his boot to the sand as he glared around the spaceport, "He left us! Again!"

"This has happened before?" Stan asked from where he was coming down off the transport with Kyle. Cartman wisely stuck next to Kenny as Kyle was glaring his direction.

"The Master thinks we drag him down on missions, so he sneaks off with the excuse normally being covered by some bullshit Jedi lessons we're supposed to know now." Cartman explained with a disgruntled expression, "He says things like how Jedi are supposed to rise with the sun, or how we're supposed to catch up to him through Force tracking. We've only been with him a few months, but this shit's happened like six times already."

"And he knows this is just as much his last chance as it ours! Argh!" Kenny was now throwing a tantrum in the sand, kicking it up in every direction while the other patrons of the spaceport complained and glared his way. "Oh, go fuck yourselves you triple-dicked scruffy ass-farmers!"

It was not yet midafternoon by the time Kenny stopped bitching about being left behind. But in his anger Kenny suggested they go off on their own and find the mission. Stan felt deeply unsure of this, especially as the group of four made their toward the spaceport's center. Mos Espa was large and sprawling. It had the look of a gnarled serpent hunkered down in the sand to escape the heat. The buildings were domed and thick-walled. They curved to protect against the sun, and the stalls and shops were fronted by awnings and verandas that provided a measure of shade to their vendors. Streets were broad and packed with beings of every shape and size, most from off planet. Some rode the desert-seasoned creatures. Domesticated banthas, massive and horned, and lumbering dew backs hauled carts, sleds, and wagons that ran on wheels and mechanical tracks by turn, a mishmash of commerce trafficking between Tatooine's smaller ports and the planets of star systems beyond.

Kyle kept a close watch for trouble. Kenny pointed out Rodians and Dugs and others whose purpose was always suspect. Most of those they passed paid them no notice. One or two turned to glance at them because they were four robed figures walking along without much aim, but dismissed them almost out of hand once they got a good look at them. As a group, they blended in nicely. There were so many combinations of creatures of every species that the appearance of one more mysterious band of tourists meant almost nothing.

"Tatooine is home to Jabba the Hutt," Kyle explained to Stan and the others, tone low and conversational. "The Hutts control the bulk of the trafficking in illegal goods, piracy, and slavery that generates most of the planet's wealth. Jabba controls the spaceports and settlements, all of the populated areas. The desert belongs to the Jawas. They're little people who scavenge whatever they can find to sell or trade."

"And then there's the Tuskens," Kenny spoke even lower than Kyle, almost like telling a ghost story, "They live as nomads and feel free to steal from everyone… even taking people from people, if ya catch my drift."

Stan shuffled closer to the group, walking silently at Kyle's elbow. He made sure to appear sharp and threatening, his eyes taking in everything. Speeders nosed by them, and droids of every size toiled in the service of desert-garbed aliens.

"There are a number of farms as well," Cartman said with an uninterested air, "They're the outlying operations that take advantage of the climate-moisture farms for the most part, operated by off-worlders not a part of the indigenous tribes and scavengers, not connected directly to the Hutts." Stan noticed how Cartman's brown eyes swept the street ahead. "This is a rough and dangerous place. Most avoid it. Its few spaceports have become havens for those who don't want to be found."

"Perfect for someone to run away to if they were coveting a dark side Holocron." Kenny whispered, glancing up into Stan's face. A pair of domesticated banthas rumbled down the broad avenue, hairy bulks clearing a path for a sled train of quarry blocks and metal struts. Horned heads nodded sleepily, padded feet stirring sand and dust in thick clouds with each lumbering step. Their driver dozed atop the foremost sled in the train, small and insignificant in their shadow.

"The perfect hive for scum and villainy." Stan recited from the original movie, folding his hands into the sleeves of his cloak. Kenny and Kyle looked deeply impressed with his offhanded quip, and even Cartman tried to hide the little fascination Stan saw on his face.

"Now you're talking and walking like a true Jedi," Kenny cackled lowly with a hand clapped on Stan's shoulder, being sure not to raise his voice too much for others to hear him. Moreover, even Stan could tell this was not the place to be a brave and honorable warrior bent on fixing the wrongs of the universe.

* * *

"Look!" Kyle pointed down the street, suddenly spotting a humanoid figure wearing long grey robes and a hooded-cloak. "Is that the Master?"

"It's gotta be the asshole," Kenny growled, his good mood evaporating swiftly where their recent betrayal was concerned, "Lets tail him and complete the mission for ourselves. When we report to the Council, they'll know we deserve better than him."

Kyle and Cartman nodded, both equally as serious about this course of action as Kenny. Stan wasn't so sure though, but that could have been because he had only been a Jedi for a little over a few days to a week now.

Kyle led the way to following the Master, who made a sharp left turn off the main street and tried to disappear into the throng. The Master zigzagged through a crowded marketplace, barely pausing to look at any of the delectable fruits and vegetables sold at various stands. Several vendors called out to them, aggressively trying to sell their foods. Stan's stomach growled since he had been banned from the last lunch served on the ship. Unfortunately there was no time for a snack when Cartman was the one yanking him away.

On the far side of the open market they saw the Master quickly scanning the crowd before they pressed onward. Hurrying forward, they saw the figure vanish around a corner.

Kenny rounded the corner first, moving quickly. They followed him, and nearly collided with a group of seedy-looking characters. Annoyed by the intrusion, two of the group glared openly at the three Jedi and Stan. A third pulled out a gun and leveled it at Kenny's chest.

"Made a wrong turn, friends?" the guy growled. His arm was heavily bandaged above the wrist, but the heavy looking gun did not waver in his hand. Kenny looked to want nothing standing in his way. He glared into the man's face as he pulled his lightsaber from his belt.

"The fuck outta my way. Now!" he barked, igniting the blade while Kyle and Cartman moved in front of Stan protectively. Stan was a little touched until he realized that Cartman maneuvered himself so he could push Stan in the way if he needed to escape.

"I'm afraid this is your unlucky day, punk." another thug spat.

"I know how to use this thing, buddy." Kenny said, giving the saber a few whirls. If Stan had been one of the thugs, that action alone would have made him piss himself and run. But the thugs didn't back down. In fact, now there were two blasters aimed at Kenny.

"Who cares about a lightsaber," one of the armed lowlifes mocked. "All that matters is if ya use it wisely for power and vengeance, or foolishly for the stupid peace?" The rest of the thugs smirked, and Kenny looked jolted. So did Kyle and Cartman.

"An ambush…" Cartman growled low in his throat, "You punks work for Dr. Lundi… Admit it!"

Stan's mind spun. Was this an ambush? He wanted to ask, but one of the hoodlums fired before he could get a word out. Kenny swung his saber, but it was too late. The red laser bullet grazed his shoulder, and Kenny screamed as his arm was burned by the hot pain. The wound looked bad to Stan, but Kenny ignored it as he leapt forward and swung again. This time he hit his target and severed a thug's finger from its hand, making the lowlife howl in pain before dropping the blaster.

"You can't win, Jedi," the thug growled, clutching his wounded hand. He fled deeper into the alley, and his wide-eyed companions were quick to follow.

"Should we go after them?" Stan asked, ready to sprint and catch them. He had run track for a number of years, and these guys were nowhere near as fast as he knew he could be, even without the Force.

"No, let them go." Kyle said after taking a look at Kenny's shoulder. "This is minor, and it'll heal quickly enough."

"Yeah, but why is it always me…" Kenny sobbed, stepping back out onto the open street. "Great, and we've lost the Master. Fuck!"

Kyle stood completely still for a few moments, refocusing energy to determine which way they should go. Watching Kyle and the others work amazed Stan as he considered that he was now a Jedi just like them and was out on an adventure with them to boot.

Kyle started them off in a new direction, heading away from the crowded marketplace. The spaceport center soon gave way to large, storehouse-type buildings. Kyle appeared deeply satisfied by something.

"I sense the Master up ahead." Kyle said with a grin. That was it, Stan thought. Kyle had found the Master through the Force.

"Time to nail this asshole." Kenny said, pounding his fist into his opposite hand. He led them up to one of the storehouses. With a signal, Kyle and Cartman disappeared in other directions while Kenny motioned for Stan to follow him. The two doubled back to the door, ducking inside when the coast looked clear. Like the pings of a sonar, Stan knew immediately that the Master was not the only person in the storehouse besides them.

A tall long-necked alien with many arms and a small head was here as well, Stan saw while moving carefully behind large crates and machinery. Kenny stopped Stan before moving in advance soundlessly toward the center of the large room.

Stan crouched behind a large enough crate, and soon he could hear two men carrying on a conversation.

"I need a Nolarian 6000 drill immediately," one of the voices said.

Stan figured it was one of the bad guys they were looking for. The voice wasn't deep like the Master's tone had been. Peering out from behind the crate, Stan saw a small-headed alien was talking to a machinery dealer by the looks of it. The dealer was holding a large wrench and his forearms were covered in grease.

"Don't have one," the dealer said flatly. "There's a shortage. And the way the mining safety committee has been watching us, there will be for a good while."

"I need a 6000. Today," the alien repeated, and the dealer sighed, as if he got requests for drills all the time.

"Are you listening?" he asked, annoyed. "I said I don't have one. And I don't know when I will. So beat it already, you weirdo."

The multi-armed alien stared at the man, clenching and unclenching his many hands into fists. His face contorted into a twisted scowl. Behind the metal crate, Stan suddenly felt a little hazy. His vision blurred and the voices around him echoed in his ears. From somewhere in his daze he realized that the alien's anger was affecting him. Kenny had told him that anger and hatred clouded one's mind but he'd never thought to feel this muddled by someone else's anger before. Kyle had amazing powers of Force suggestion. Perhaps he could tell Stan more about this feeling. By concentrating hard on the alien and dealer, Stan was able to clear his vision and his head. He focused on what was transpiring in front of him. The strange alien was now shouting at the machinery dealer.

"Pathetic weakling!" he raged, "Only a fool would let such technicalities interrupt his business!"

The dealer stood staring at the furious alien, frozen to the spot by the sudden anger. The alien turned and stormed toward the storehouse door. "I have the power to find it without your stupid machinery," he was talking to himself. Holy shit, Stan thought, this guy was bat shit crazy! The alien's several arms waved forcefully through the air. "It is simply a matter of timing. Yes. I just have to time it right…"

What did that mean? Stan wondered as he followed the alien out of the storehouse with his eyes. Kenny appeared behind him, tapping him on the shoulder and they crept along outside. Kyle and Cartman were not far behind, and the two stepped out into the street as if the whole group had been together the whole time. The alien, however, had vanished.

* * *

"You've been injured, Kenneth," a voice came from behind them, and the four whirled around to see that a grey cloaked figure was behind them. His face was hidden within his hood, but Stan could simply tell this was the Master. Beside the Master were two others in cloaks with hoods. One male, the other female.

Kenny scowl at the Master before turning to peer down the street. There was no sign of anyone.

"I wonder where Professor Lundi could have gone so quickly, hmm." The other male asked, his voice sly and rich like a gambler.

"Humph, I've witnessed stranger disappearing acts." The Master replied, folding his hands into his sleeves.

Kyle turned back toward the Master, mouth slightly open, as if to say something. But at that moment a figure fled in the opposite direction. Without so much as a word or signal, the Jedi gave chase. The figure retreated down an alley and disappeared into a narrow walkway between two buildings. The Jedi followed close behind, nearly colliding into a concrete wall.

"Dammit! A fucking dead end!" Kenny growled while the Master's male companion ran his fingers along the wall's surface. Maybe he thought it was one of those secret entrances like in Scooby Doo? The wall seemed permanent and solid, but the elusive figure was nowhere to be found.

"This mission is making me go fucking crazy, man!" Kenny said, slumping with exasperation, "We're not getting anywhere!"

The Master gazed steadily at the eldest of his Padawans. Then he bent to take a closer look at the boy's wounded shoulder.

"You curse much too much when you're frustrated, Kenneth."

"My name is Kenny, ass-wipe…" Kenny replied sharply, but then sighed. "We encountered a street gang," Kenny said more quietly, but he couldn't keep his frustration in check. "They were looking for trouble and when they found out I was a Jedi they wanted to stop us even more."

Cartman crossed his arms while his gaze stuck firmly on the two mysterious partners the Master had with him. "I don't understand how there can be so many people after us when we hardly know what we are after ourselves."

"Your response to this situation is inappropriate," the male companion spoke once again, all amusement gone from his gambling voice, "A Jedi Knight does not throw temper tantrums. But we understand how frustrating this mission has become… for all of us… Regardless, you're feeling anger fed by close contact with the dark side from whatever Professor Lundi has in his possession. It is essential that you remain patient."

"You must not let the nature of this mission disturb you so, Padawans," the Master continued calmly, "I know it is difficult. We are dealing with a more powerful evil than we had first believed. But becoming angry only takes you a treacherous step closer to the dark side."

Kenny looked down at his feet, as if ashamed of his anger.

"Anger and fear of the dark side are easy paths," the Master's friend went on, as if Kenny had spoken of his shame. "It is not difficult to let negative emotions overtake you. It is difficult, however, to let them move through you and leave without reacting to them. Yet that is exactly what you must do now." They all nodded, even the hooded girl next to gambler guy.

The Master sensed that they understood what he was telling them, even young Stanley. But he also knew that it was much harder to feel it in one's heart. Without speaking, the Master turned and left the dead-end alleyway, heading back toward the street. Kendo and Karen followed him.

"We'll be effectively splitting up from here. Let us review what we do know," he said as he strode forward. In truth he did not feel as confident about how to proceed as he appeared. But he wanted to give his Padawans and Stan a sense of positive direction.

"We know that Lundi has a large and fanatical following of students and many others as well." Kyle said as though reciting text book information.

"There are Sith Sects throughout the galaxy and they are very likely in touch with one another." Kenny contributed like a beat cop as the Master nodded.

"That could explain why so many people are anxious to stop us. We know Lundi is after a Sith Holocron, and that he needs difficult-to-obtain mining equipment to get it." The Master looked toward Kendo from beyond his hood.

"Or at least he would have liked to have had the equipment to go after it." Kendo put forth, and the girl beside him nodded along with his observation.

"We know that there is some question of timing," Stan spoke up, everyone in the group turning to him as he knew he should have just kept his mouth shut.

"Yes, true," the Master said, steeping his hands into his sleeves once again, "And the most pressing information being whether Lundi can manage the powerful Holocron on his own."

"So from that," Kenny quickened his ace to be at the Master's side, "what's our next move?"

"We split up again." The Master said, making Kenny's eyes narrow, "I'll be accompanying Master Kendo and young Karen to aid them in more intense research. You four will be doing the leg work of the mission."

"More like the grunt work…" Kenny muttered, his arms crossed as the Master seemed to scowl at him through the aura Stan felt around the guy.

"You also need time to process your emotions, young Kenneth. I cannot always be there for you, all the time, like your previous Master." This made Stan stand up straighter as his blue eyes widened. Kenny had a previous Jedi Master? Who was it? What happened to this last Master? And why did Kenny appear so pissed off by the mention as well?

"I'm not like Kyle's old Master or even Cartman's previous Master. I am myself, and I do not change where personality is concerned." The Master said, his words soft but firm.

"At least all of that was true," Kenny spat.

"I will be contacting the Council soon," the Master went on as though Kenny had not spoken, "You four head back toward the spaceport. If you move quickly enough, you might be able to follow Professor Lundi off world."

"Off world?" Kyle repeated in confusion. Did this mean they were being sent ahead on their own? It sounded crazy.

"He's going for a ship, and if you hurry you'll be able to catch it before it departed." Kendo remarked as the Master pulled out his comlink from his utility belt. It was a small device that looked similar to the first generation of the iPod Nano. "This mission is anything but ordinary. May the Force be with you," Master Kendo bowed and so did the girl named Karen while the Master turned from his students and Stan to contact the Council.

* * *

Stan and the others walked away just as Yoda picked up on the other end of the communications. The Master wanted to keep Grandmaster Yoda informed about how the mission was developing. He was surprised by the information that Yoda had for him, though.

" _Information about another, larger collection of Sith items we have_ ," Yoda said gravely. His voice was steady, but the Master sensed that the wise Jedi Master was alarmed nonetheless. " _An anonymous informant it was_." The Master listened intently to everything Yoda said, pausing in the street several times. Kendo and Karen slowed alongside him, eyes registering curiosity and concern. When the transmission was finished, the Master sighed heavily. He was beginning to get a bad feeling about all of this.

"They've discovered other Sith artifacts," he began.

"I thought it was something like that," Kendo said with a serious nod. "What did they find?"

"A whole storehouse full of partially constructed weapons and devices. There were also copies of Dr. Lundi's texts and teachings," the Master replied, "The trademark drawing of a Sith Holocron was on the wall."

Kendo was quiet for a moment as they continued to head back to the hangar.

"Where was the storehouse?" Karen finally asked.

"Umgul, in the Mid Rim," the Master replied. He quickened his stride slightly. The sooner they got back to the hangar where Kendo's spacecraft lay waiting, the better.

"But that's nowhere near the first stash." Karen reflected thoughtfully, keeping up with the two Jedi Masters.

"Exactly," Kendo agreed with a nod. Though he and his apprentice had only recently become aware of them, Sith Sect followers were becoming a hard, cold fact of life. Kendo moved past an alien selling electronic gadgets and a humanoid female pushing a loaded fruit cart. Did these people study the Sith, he wondered. "What about you're three… Ahem, apologizes, _four_ students?"

A small crowd of people suddenly appeared in front of them.

"If they don't catch Lundi in time to follow him, then they'll be fine sniffing for answers here." He answered in a grumble.

The crowd in front of them would not move, and normally this would not have bothered him. It was impossible to sway people at all times and other times they just wanted to be rude.

But for some reason this time it was disturbing.

Before the three expert Jedi Knights could weave through the cluster, blaster fire rang out.


	4. The Sand People Dilemma

**Summary** : The Jedi and Stan finally arrive on Tatooine to discover Professor Murk Lundi, a historian with a dangerous interest in the Sith. They follow him around, but the Jedi are attacked by a group of thugs. And then they discover a woman kidnapped by the Sand People. Does Stan have what it takes to be a true Jedi out on a real mission alongside Kenny, Kyle, and Cartman, or will he just be in the way? And what secrets are the Jedi holding back from him?

 **Chapter 4: The Sand People Dilemma**

* * *

Kenny had his lightsaber activated in less than a second when the firing started going off in the center. But with the screaming hordes of people on all sides of him, it was difficult to tell where the bolts were coming from. Focusing his energy, he stood completely still for a nanosecond, then slashed out, ignoring the pain in his shoulder. He successfully deflected three bolts before the firing stopped. Screams of panic echoed around him long after the firing was over. In the aftermath it was nearly impossible to be certain of the origin of the shots. He deactivated his lightsaber amid more screams and stares. Luckily, nobody appeared to be hurt.

Suddenly Kyle was by his side again with Cartman dragging Stan along, who was in panic.

"The fuck just happened, dude?" Stan asked while his eyes shot in all directions. Kenny did not need to speak first, because Kyle had the answer he lacked.

"The raiders came and took someone." Kyle responded with narrowed jade eyes toward where Kenny had deflected blaster fire from. "They must have tried to take more, but I think you scared them off, Ken."

"Oh shit, dude," Stan shrugged off Cartman's hand and stood up straight, smoothing out his Jedi robes. "We have to go after them! I've… uhh, _heard_ about what they do! It wasn't nice at all, dudes."

And it was not nice from what Stan remembered about Star Wars. The fucking Sand People were evil monsters that tried to eat Luke. Or at least, that's what Stan thought they were going to do to the young Skywalker.

"The main thing now is to find an escape route." Kenny said, looking around, "Come on."

He led the way through the crowd to a secluded area outside the market. The four of them were just getting their bearings when more blaster fire rang out. And whizzed past Kyle's head, nearly grazing an ear. Kyle dropped, then quickly got back up when Stan pulled the redhead up. It was definitely time to return to the docking bay.

As they raced through the streets, Kenny wondered if life on Tatooine was always this hazardous or if the Jedi had been targeted specifically. If so, by whom? The thugs in the alley? How large a network of Sith Sects could there be? And who was informing them? Another blaster bolt whizzed past them, but it missed the Jedi by nearly a meter. They were getting away. Kenny ran to catch up to Stan and Kyle, who were by far moving quicker than him and Cartman. Stan knew the way back to the spaceport, that Kenny could sense, but he appeared to be taking a roundabout path. That's when it became clear to him. Stan was probably moving like so in an attempt to lose their pursuer altogether. As they turned corners and wove through the streets, they gradually left their assailant behind.

"We have to go after her, Dad," came a suddenly solid and unwavering voice. Kenny stopped and stared at the people in the middle of the street they had turned on. It was two men. One man had fallen to his knees weeping while the other stood standing there, his expression grim and determined. "I'll be damned if I let them have Mom! She is alive and we cannot leave her to them!" The older male of the two wiped away the last of his tears and stared hard at the younger guy, then nodded grimly.

"Sirs, what's happened here?" Stan asked before they could stop him. Kenny realized belatedly that Stan had a problem with keeping his mouth shut.

"The Tusken raiders…" the older man looked ready to cry again, "They've taken my wife… Please, if you can, help us."

Stan looked back at Kenny, who glanced back at the alleyway they had come. So far they were in the clear.

"Show us to the scene of the crime." Kenny said, hoping it was far away from the spaceport.

Apparently it was far away. The woman taken was the crying older man's wife. Within a few minutes of offering their help, the Jedi were surrounded by angry farmers who had finally had enough of living in fear of the Tusken Raiders.

"They're wild beasts, and we should have gotten the Mos Eisley authorities to exterminate them like the vermin they are long ago! Them and the stinking Jawas!" one farmer roared as the assembly moved out of the spaceport and toward their farms.

"The Jawas have helped us in the past. We cannot forget it." A woman reminded them all gently.

"Then not the Jawas!" the farmer roared back, and the lot of them jumped. Taking note of their horrified expression, Kyle stepped in and calmed the assembly at once.

"Not the Jawas, then. But the Tuskens are your problem at the moment." Kyle assumed, and the masses agreed loudly by shouting and throwing their fists into the air.

"They kill and steal whenever and wherever they can!" one yelled.

"No good comes of them!" another thundered noisily.

"We'll get all the farmers organized!" Cliegg, the older man from the street, said and the farmers agreed.

"And maybe get a call in to Mos Eisley, as well." The younger man from before, Owen Lars, Cliegg's son, spoke up and a few mumbled their agreement with him. Owen looked at his father, and Cliegg nodded back to his son.

* * *

Before too long there was now a crowd of at least twenty to thirty farmers and incensed civilians who wanted the blood of Tuskens to be split on the sands for taking one of their own. The farmers had even come prepared, arming themselves with blunt objects, ray guns called blasters, and hovering motorcycles Kenny said were called speeder bikes. The masses were outraged at the Sand People, and were going to go out for them even without Jedi help. The authorities from Mos Eisley had not yet arrived, but the farmers were impatient, especially Cliegg. He mounted his bike, and Stan threw himself on behind the man to ensure his safety as best he could. Kenny and Kyle took his lightsaber for a moment, powering it up from training mode so it was now capable of cutting instead of merely burning hotly.

Only an hour pasted before they were roaring across the open desert after the Tuskens. They traveled through great canyons of multicolored stone, across dunes of blowing and shifting sand, and along an ancient, long-dry riverbed. Their only guide was the rage in Cliegg's heart and the vague directions given to them by the Jawas, a group of the brown robed creatures with inquisitive red eyes poking out at them from the shadows of huge cowls. When they had first ridden upon the creatures, their ceaseless chatter hummed like a strange music to Stan. It took them several minutes to convince the Jawas that they weren't interested in purchasing any droids, but Stan saw that it would then after take a longer time to get them to understand that he and the Jedi and the farmers were merely looking for information about any Tusken Raiders. With a few shiny little plate coins that Owen and Cliegg called credit, Stan bought a droid from the Jawas while Kenny convinced them to give up the information they needed soon after. The Jawas talked excitedly among themselves while giving Stan a droid that one of the farmers took for holding. Then the little creatures started pointing this way and that, hopping all about.

"Jawas are no friends of Tuskens," Owen muttered to Stan and his friends, "The Tuskens prey on the Jawas just as they prey on anyone else they find vulnerable." Then Owen cracked a half-amused smile, "And even worse to the Jawa salesman mentality, Tuskens never purchase any droids!"

The group of brown-robed little people eventually came to agreement, and pointed as one to the east. With a nod, the party of riders and Jedi sped away. The lack of further sales and more monetary compensation seemed to aggravate the Jawas a little, but Stan was sure they'd be fine. After all, his droid didn't look like much anyway.

"There they are!" a woman cried, pointing straight ahead, while keeping her speeder bike at full throttle. Kenny was happily hugging her around the middle with his arms under his plentiful breasts.

The twenty-nine others saw the target, the rising dust of a line of walking banthas. With a communal roar, the outraged farmers and spaceport civilians pressed on, determined to exact revenge, determined to rescue the man, Cliegg Lars' wife, Shmi.

If she was still alive among this band of Tusken Raiders, that was…

Amidst the roar of engines and cries of revenge, they swept down the descending wash, closing fast on the banthas, eager for battle.

Cliegg pumped his head, growling all the while, as if pleading with his speeder bike to accelerate even more. He swerved in from the left flank, Stan having to clutch his seat tightly in order to hang on as the man cut into the center of the formation. Cliegg then lowered his head and opened the speeder bike up, trying to catch the lead riders. All he wanted was to be in the thick of it, to get his strong arms about a Tusken throat. The banthas were clearly in sight, then, along with their robed riders.

Another cry went up, one of revenge. One that fast turned to horror. The leading edge of the farmer army plowed headlong into a wire cleverly strung across the field, at neck height to a man riding a speeder bike. Cliegg's own cry also became one of horror as he watched others thrown to the ground.

Purely on instinct, knowing that the man wouldn't stop his speeder in time, if at all, Stan leapt forward with his lightsaber coming into hand while Cliegg leapt up, planting one foot on the seat. Stan's laser sword ignited in midair, and he sliced through the wire without trouble. However, he did not cut through it in time as Cliegg cried out with a flash of pain in the Force. The man went spinning head over heels while Kyle had jumped onto his hover bike and saved it from wreckage on top the man.

Cliegg went tumbling, landing hard on the compact sands. Stan landed on his feet, skidding briefly as all the world about him became a blur for the third time that day. It was all just another frenzy of sudden activity. He saw the farmers racing onward to attack the Tusken Radiers, heard the man's son, Owen Lars, crying out to his father. Kenny was calling out for him, though it seemed as if Stan's friend was in a galaxy far, far away. The majority of the Tuskens were just a few dozen meters ahead of them. Stan could see their wrapped leather boots, sand-colored robes, and saw how Cliegg grabbed the leg of a Tusken as it ran past him with a rage that could not be denied, even by his own disorientation. Stan leapt forward once more using the Force to enhance his jump. His lightsaber went whirling as he blocked the Tusken staff just as it was brought slamming down at Cliegg.

From there Cliegg did all the rest of the work. The man was not giving up, even with his leg wounded harshly. He shoved forward and wrapped both his arms around the Tusken's legs, tugging the creature down to the ground before him. Cliegg crawled over the raider, his strong hands battering the alien creature, then finding the hold he wanted, Cliegg choked the life from the Tusken without mercy.

All around him, the fight intensified, with the farmers battling the Tusken raiders. Kenny was fighting to get near him while Kyle was zooming around on the speeder bike, disabling the raiders with swift flashes of a green saber. Cartman was still on the back of a rider, going up to the very front of the march where he jumped atop a banta beast and stabbed his plasma sword into its back.

Kenny raced to reach Stan before anything happened to the little fool. Rushing past and battling through the largest concentrations of farmers and Tusken Raiders. Dammit, this was not their problem! They were supposed to be following Professor Lundi off-world to get the Sith Holocron before the idiot teacher used it for galactic domination, or something! Why did Stan have to a little bitch about helping people?

But Kenny winced as he spotted Stan, deflecting blaster bolts and trying his best to protect the profusely bleeding old guy they had come with to help. His wife had been taken by the Tusken Raiders, and so they had formed a search party from all the farmers in the area. It had taken the four Jedi apprentices away from whoever had been trying to kill them, but this only landed them in an equally horrible situation.

"Dude," Stan said as soon as Kenny was at his back, deflecting staff swings from the closest raider, "this is fucked up right here."

"Shut up!" Kenny barked, but couldn't keep the amusement from his voice, "It's your fault! You and your selfless action hero shit!"

"You agreed to this," Stan argued, even as he breathed a bit easier with Kenny watching his back. Stan saw a blaster bolt coming his way, and swung out again at it, deflecting it as surely as he would have hit a homerun in baseball.

"Yeah, but how was I supposed to say no to those eyes of yours?" Kenny asked, "You were like a newborn Ginny puff!"

The banter between them did not stop them from working their blades furiously to turn back the storm of laser bolts and Tusken staffs screaming toward them from the multitude of raiders. Back-to-back, Stan and Kenny went into action, moving into a crowd of raiders, taking down several with deflected bolts, then slashing through others. Stan seemed to be doing greater the more he threw himself into the battle.

"Did you know you work well with Moving Mediation?" Kenny asked as they turned in unison as they went. Stan went at one raider with his lightsaber up high, but when that raider lifted its staff and gave a war cry, the two Jedi turned about and Kenny came around with his lightsaber down low, shearing the raider's legs off at the knee.

"I kind of figured that out after fighting you guys all night a couple of days ago," Stan said, moving in tandem with Kenny to disable more of the raiders. It proved easier than just killing them, Stan found, especially since he couldn't bring himself to aim for their chests or heads when his saber could cut through metal wiring with apparent ease. Chopping off arms and cutting into joints, however, was another thing entirely. Stan observed how it worked well against the Sand People. It kept them alive and kept them down for the count. It satisfied Stan to know that they'd be limping for the rest of their lives in remembrance of why weird-looking aliens shouldn't fuck with pissed off normal-looking humans.

And for a place where everyone was basically an alien, including him, that sounded way more racist than he would ever care to admit.

* * *

Cartman spotted a Tusken woman atop the bantha he hoped onto, in front holding the reins while a Tusken child stared at him with an incredulous expression as he held a pail of dirty water. Cartman smirked as he stabbed into the back of the humongous beast, making it bellow in pain. He leapt forward, pushing mother and child from the bantha while it writhed in slow torture. Then he was moving, though he was hardly aware of his actions. His blade flashed and he ran on. He leapt from the bantha beast and heard the Tusken woman screaming. Well now, that was annoying. He impaled her, stopping the violent noise from her while also receiving a cheer from one of the bypassing farmers in the battle. Now all the other raiders seemed in motion, Tuskens rushing forward to greet him, many with weapons in hand.

But Cartman was into the dance of death then, into the energy of the Force. He leapt far and long, clearing one raider and coming down before another, his blade flashing even before he landed, even before the two Tuskens recognized that he had jumped between them. A third came at him, thrusting forth a spear, but the brunette lifted an empty hand and set up a wall of Force energy as solid as stone. Then he shoved out with that hand, and the Tusken spearman flew away. It had to have been a full thirty meters, his best Force push yet. The raider went smashing into another bantha. Cartman was off and running, off and leaping, his blade spinning left and right in a blur, every stab taking a Tusken down, writhing to the ground, every slash putting a piece of a Tusken on the ground. Soon none were standing against him, all trying to flee, but Cartman would have none of that.

"Stop!" Kyle came flying toward him, just as he was about to crush a group of Tusken raiders with a large boulder in the distance. Kyle was running, strides enhanced by the Force, overcoming the fleeing creatures, dismembering them, everyone, but not once striking to kill as Cartman did.

"They are here to be slaughtered!" Cartman replied, already knowing why Kyle was even bothering to come his way. They differed too much. Kyle was for peace, but Cartman was all for war. "They knowingly took a human woman."

"But they certainly don't know any better!" Kyle said, putting away the green lightsaber in hand. "The farmers have already found the woman and they're now bringing back the wounded and dead. Almost ten farmers were wounded and three were killed in the party of thirty."

"Yeah, and more would have died if we weren't out here." Cartman spat back, deactivating his saber as he knew Kyle would never let him take another step with it still bathing the sands a scarlet glow.

Glancing off in the distance, Cartman spied Stan and Kenny were helping that guy with his father. Looked like the man had almost lost a leg. A shame that was he hadn't lost it. He should have for making them help him rescue his stupid wife and getting Cartman lectured by this Corellian-kike in the first place.

"We've got her!" one of the farmers yelled out, even as the one with their rescued was already sailing across the sands back toward the moisture farms. "We've got Shmi now! Ride out! Ride out!"

The others were quick to follow while scattered cheers and whoops of joy rang out on the empty sands. The two suns of the planet were beginning to set when the party of satisfied sharecroppers roared their bikes across the great sea of desert. The mood around them all was one far brighter than when they had ridden out in the first place. Stan noted this with a smile as they're dark emotions no longer clouded his mind. He could enjoy their happiness and relief with peace of mind. Kenny and Kyle must have shared his sentiments because they were way more relaxed than before. Even Cartman appeared to have sated his thirst for violence in that last battle.

Squinting and shielding his eyes from the glare of the setting suns, Stan tried to catch a glimpse of the woman they had saved from the raiders.

"Oh, Shmi," Cliegg Lars said breathlessly behind him. He was trembling noticeably as he held onto Stan's waist. He kept sniffling and struggled to keep from sobbing while he muttered thanks to Stan and the others into Stan's back. It was very awkward, but Stan didn't say a word. Kyle came zooming up beside him on another bike with Owen on the back.

"She's alive, Dad… She's alive, and that's what really matters…" Owen said as Stan could feel the man's emotions at so close a range. The son wanted nothing more than to drape his arm across his father's shoulders. When Stan looked over at him, he noticed a tear sliding down Owen's cheek.

"Where'd you learn to ride a speeder bike so well?" Kyle asked, and Stan shrugged.

"I don't know," Stan said, but in true it wasn't that different from the motorbike his dad had kept back home. Even now those memories were murky and barely distinguishable. He couldn't recall his dad's face, or the motorbike's color, but he knew his dad owned a bike and had let him ride it more than a fair few times. "Guess it just came naturally to me."

* * *

Under the pale light of a full moon, Shmi Skywalker pulled herself from bed rest and onto her feet. The Tuskens had treated her roughly, but thankfully she had not been in their care for longer. She had a few bruises, and maybe a fractured rib, but for the most part she had been thirsty and hot riding along the desert in the hostile company of the raiders. Not too far her room on the moisture farm, the Jedi Knights who had come to her rescue lay sleeping for the night in their family room. She crept closer to them, being sure to not wake her husband, whose deep cut wound from a metal wire she heard was still in need of professional healing. Shmi came into the family, studying the resting Jedi as they each breathed calmly and softly like her Anakin did when he had first been seen to be Qui-Gon Jinn all those years ago. As she came around a bit more, she grew even more intrigued, noting that all four of the Jedi appeared just as human as the one who had come to free her son Annie. Were they friends of Qui-Gon's?

Were they friends of her little Annie?!

Silent as the shadows on the wall, the mother slipped through the room, working her way gradually toward the four boys that had rescued her. She came in front of them at last, and put her hands against the soft skin of the dark-haired one, feeling the confused emotions and pain of the person deep within this child. A quick glance around at the others told her that despite all their calm faces, they had all been through much pain and suffering before for ones so young.

No, Shmi did not need to see these things with her eyes. A mother always knew. And kneeling beside this dark-haired boy made her relive those moments long ago, when she and Anakin had lived their lives as Watto's slaves. It was not an easy life, but she had her Annie with her, and given that, Shmi could remember those times fondly. Only now did she come to the realization that she might never see her son except in those so distant memories and dreams.

Did she truly appreciate how much she had missed the boy over the last seven years? All those times staring up at the night sky, she had thought of him. She had imagined him soaring across the galaxy, rescuing the downtrodden, saving planets from ravaging monsters and evil tyrants. But she had always expected to see her little Annie again. Had always expected him to walk onto the moisture farm one day, that impish smile of his, the one that could light up any room, greeting her as if they had never been apart.

Shmi had loved Cliegg and Owen. Truly she had. Cliegg was her rescuer, her dashing knight, and Owen had been like the son she had lost, always compassionate, always happy to listen to her endless stories of Anakin's exploits. And Shmi was growing to love Beru, too. Who could not? Beru was that special combination of compassion and quiet inner strength. But despite the good fortune that had brought those three into her life, improving her lot in life one million-fold, Shmi Skywalker had always kept a special place in her heart reserved for her Annie.

Her son, her hero.

And so now, as it she reflected that with the Tuskens her life could have ended so suddenly, Shmi's thoughts focused on those memories she had of Anakin, while at the same time, she reached out to him with her heart. He was always different with such feelings, always so attuned to that mysterious Force. Qui-Gon had come to Tatooine. Had seen it in her son so clearly. Perhaps, then, Annie would feel her love for him now. She needed that, needed to complete the cycle, to let her son recognize that through it all, through the missing years and the great distances between them, she had loved him unconditionally and had thought of him constantly.

Annie was her comfort, her place to hide from any pain life could throw her way. The Tuskens would have given her that much more pain had they not been stopped, but Shmi was sure she would have taken every bit of it with Anakin in her heart.

And now, she desperately needed only to see her beloved son one last time. One last time to complete the cycle…


	5. Still Waters Run Deep

**Summary** :

 **Chapter 5: Still Waters Run Deep**

* * *

"Are all of our adventures going to be so…" Stan breathed uncertainly, choosing his words carefully, " _entertaining_?"

Kyle gave him a thoughtful frown. Kenny simply shrugged. Cartman glared back at him before sighing.

"Actually," Kenny tapped his chin to ponder memories, "now that you mention it, yes."

Kyle went back to staring at the Lars family, then at the tangled masses of wreckage that littered the hangar bay, trying to pick out anything that still even resembled a ship. This place looked as if it had taken a direct hit from a photon-cannon; wind howled against his back through the open hatchway where Stan stood with Kenny and Cartman, and wisps of sand whirled into the air, blown inward through gaps in the scorched and buckled garage doors.

Somehow they had allowed the Lars family to convince them of two things. The first thing was to find them a ship in an old abandoned hanger they knew about on the edge of the spaceport of Mos Eisley. Now Kyle understood why this place was abandoned. Nothing in the hanger looked salvageable to jade green eyes. The second thing was the oddest request from the family of four, though.

Shmi, the woman they had rescued yesterday, wanted to tag along with them. It hadn't even come to an argument! She had pierced them with one look, and they had not argued. Neither had her husband, son, or soon-to-be daughter-in-law.

They didn't know that her resilience was wrought of a mother's love.

Kenny had hid behind Cartman and Stan had been a little bitch and hid behind Kenny. Only Kyle had stared back at the woman for several moments before conceding to her. Kyle sensed something deep within the woman's emotion. It was more than a desire to leave or to travel, which was honestly impressive to Kyle.

"None of these ships will get us anywhere!" Cartman shouted above the wind, and Kyle had to agree.

"What are we going to do?" Stan asked. Kenny shook his head.

"Kyle?" Kenny called out to the redhead. He didn't know, and the Force wasn't offering any clues.

"How should I know?" Kyle said dryly, glancing around through the wreckage still, "You and Stan are the heroes."

"Yeah, heroes!" Cartman crowed, "Go find us a ship!"

"Well," Stan spoke up, and Cartman slapped the center of his own face before sliding the hand down, "there was that other hanger back along the way. It looked open and no one was going near it. Maybe we can just steal a ship from there?"

"Jedi don't steal." Kyle felt the need to say, even while whirling around on the spot and stalking off in the direction of this supposed hanger. "We borrow."

* * *

Finally the Jedi and the Lars family arrived at the new hangar. Cartman rushed inside and skidded to a stop, but the place was empty.

Empty except for a heap lying on the floor. The heap was still wearing a flight suit.

It was a pilot! The others were now coming in and all of them rushed to the pilot. His large rust-colored head lay on the ground at an odd angle. There was an ugly lump at the base of his neck, and one of his long arms was draped over his closed eyes. Squatting down beside him, Shmi Skywalker took his pulse.

"It's weak and slow, but it's there," she reported, sitting back on her heels while Kenny came beside her.

"Do you think he's been drugged?" Kenny asked the room as a whole, looking over the body. The pilot's two-toed feet were pointing at awkward angles.

"It looks that way," Cartman replied.

"As well as being struck on the head." Cliegg chimed in from his hovercar.

Kenny stood up with a sigh, "Shit, it might be several hours before we're even able to talk to him."

Cartman held back his exasperation. Another roadblock. They were on an important mission, yet had no idea where they were going next or what they were supposed to do. And to top it off, they were stranded on a planet with someone who wanted to stop them, possibly for good. Trying not to let frustration overtake him completely, Cartman turned his back on the pilot and sat down to wait.

Stan, apparently, did not have the same plan.

A bucket of water was thrown over the pilot, who jerked up with a low groan and moments later sat up groggily. The others stared at Stan as he tossed aside the bucket carelessly, letting it bang to the floor loudly and noisily. The pilot blinked several times before looking around, observing how four Jedi and some people were standing in front of him while the empty space where his ship had been a few hours ago was next to them. There was a moment of heavy silence before he began to shout in anger. He tried to leap to his feet, but quickly sat back down. Gingerly feeling the back of his neck, he found the lump and shouted some more.

"Try to remain calm," Kyle said in a soothing tone. The pilot cursed, but didn't attempt to stand up again.

"Your ship was stolen, then?" Cartman asked. He got up and crossed the hangar in a few quick strides to stand next to his three fellow Jedi.

"Well, I don't think I misplaced it, tubby." the pilot replied hotly. The sound of his voice was strange to Stan, especially since it came out of two mouths at once.

The pilot eyed their entire group with distrust.

"Who are you?" he asked, glancing between them all with suspicion.

"We are Jedi from the Republic on a mission." Kyle replied calmly, "I am Kyle Broflovski. With me are my fellow Jedi Knights, Kenny McCormick, Eric Cartman, and Stan Marsh. With us here are the Lars family, who found you like this when they came to inquire about your ship providing them passage to a planet."

Stan saw that Kyle wasn't telling all the truth, like them being Jedi Knights or the Lars family needing the pilot. But hey, it was a lot better than telling the guy they were there to steal his spaceship when they saw it was already stolen.

"There's another thing," Kenny put in as he stepped forward. "It may be that the being we are following on our mission may have stolen your ship. Can you tell us what happened?"

The pilot gently rubbed the lump on the back of his neck. "I was working on my ship, you know, just making minor adjustments to the hyperdrive. Someone came up behind me and whacked me on the back of my neck." The pilot winced as he continued rubbing his wound.

"Did you see who it was that attacked you, sir?" Stan asked, trying his best to sound like a Jedi or cop back on Earth. The pilot shook his head.

"I didn't see anyone. Or hear anything, actually. It could have been any thief or scoundrel on this stinking planet. There are plenty around here."

"There was a person, a Quermian, who was looking for someone to fly him off world. Did he come to you?" Kenny asked, but the pilot glared at him.

"How do you know about the Quermian?" the captain asked. Kyle waved his hand in front the pilot.

"It doesn't matter how we know." Kyle said softly while the pilot's eyes clouded for a second. The pilot then swiped a hand through the air dismissively.

"It doesn't matter how you know. But I don't know why he'd attack the pilot who was about to take him to a place he asked to go." Kyle and Kenny shared a look. Stan glanced to Cartman in confusion, but Cartman's gaze was sharp with suspicion.

"Perhaps he was interested in piloting the ship himself," Kyle mused dryly.

"Or saving on the fare," Kenny added in a mutter.

The pilot sighed, hands coming to rest on his knees. "There are many thieves on Tatooine. Even more cutthroats. This kind of thing happens all the time." He looked around the empty hangar and a spark of fury came into his eyes while twin growls escaped his four lips. "Just not to me…"

Stan could understand how the pilot felt. His friends had been frustrated with this mission pretty much since it started. To lose your space-traveling car was on a whole other level.

"Well hey," Stan put forth with a smile, "At least you've got insurance, right?"

The pilot whirled his attention at him, at first glaring, but then two smirks overcame his face. "Yeah… you're right. I do! And Jabba the Hutt will be paying out the ass for this one!"

"So, umm… Can you tell us where you were gonna bring him? The guy, that is." Stan asked, and the pilot looked all too happy now to share the information with them.

"Oh yeah, of course I can." He said with toothy twin smiles. Stan noticed that he seemed more willing to help them now. Perhaps he thought it might get his ship back after he got the insurance money from it. A win-win situation for a guy like him. "I had just finished keying the information into my navigational computer. I remember because it's not a planet I'm asked to fly to very often. In fact, I can't say I've ever been there."

"And the name of the planet?" Kyle asked with narrowed jade green eyes.

"Kodai," the pilot said, "We were going to Kodai."

Kyle and Kenny thanked the pilot and helped the guy to his feet. They had no way of knowing if the ship was really going to Kodai or not. Professor Lundi was certainly smart enough to throw them off the trail or even deftly set a trap. But they had nothing else to go on. The sooner they could get to Kodai to investigate, the better.

"Do you need help getting somewhere?" Kenny asked the pilot.

The pilot shook his head. Though it had been only minutes since he'd woken up, he was already quite steady.

"No, I'll be fine," he replied, but then a thoughtful look over came him, "But if you find my ship, you know where I am."

"Of course," Kyle said with a nod of understanding.

"Yeah, dude, we'll get it back if we can." Stan promised, making Cartman smack him in the back of the head.

* * *

The group of Jedi and Lars members quickly left the small hangar and made their way down the street and into a larger one. It was full of ships of all sizes. Pilots from all over the galaxy talked shop or tinkered with their vessels. It seemed like it would be easy enough to hire one of them, Kyle thought with a stony expression. The redhead strode up to a pilot and asked if he would take them to Kodai.

"Kodai?" the pilot repeated, shaking his head. "You've got the wrong guy."

Several more said the same thing. Kyle was obviously pretty frustrated with the repeated failure because the redhead used the Jedi Mind Trick on the next one after growling about how eight pilots had so far denied them passage.

"I will take you to Kodai," the pilot said in monotone, but then shook her head, "Yeah… yeah, I'll take you to Kodai. But I won't land. At least not until next week," she was a humanoid who wouldn't even give them a last name. She had long dark hair and dark brown eyes.

"Call me Wendy," she said before agreeing to drop them off and leave immediately. She could not be convinced to wait around for the return trip, not even with the Mind Trick from Kyle being used on her. However, they could not afford to be choosy. They boarded right away. While the pilot readied the ship, they settled in for the journey and Shmi said her farewells to her family, vowing to return after she had seen her son Anakin once more.

"Not many people want to go to Kodai right now," Wendy said as she keyed the destination points into her navigational computer.

Kyle raised an eyebrow, but it was Kenny who replied to her.

"Yeah, we gathered as much," he said. "Why is that?"

The pilot turned to look over her shoulder at them, giving them a look that read how she wouldn't bother to tell them if they didn't already know. Stan kept his mouth shut, and the others didn't prod her either.

It's just as well, Kenny thought. We can get the information from the Temple. Stepping out of the cockpit and into the hold, Kenny switched on his com-link. He had heard of Kodai, and thought it was located somewhere in the Outer Rim Territories. If he was not mistaken, its surface was mostly covered by a vast sea. His com-link crackled to life and a moment later Temple Archivist Jocasta Nu's voice echoed quietly in the hold of the ship. Cartman had already come and stood with him by that time

" _It is good to hear from you, young Jedi_ ," she said. His com-link was on a Padawan channel, and probably displayed as much to her. " _How may I be of assistance to you_?"

"Yeah, we were hoping you could give us some information on the planet Kodai." Kenny requested from the renowned archivist.

" _Kodai, in the Outer Rim_ ," she said. There was a brief silence as Jocasta plugged the data for the request into her Temple computer. Kenny could hear her fingernails pressing buttons and keys, clicking against the display of her computer. " _I seem to remember something about a massive, swelling sea_ …" Kenny and Cartman could hear her mutter, but then she spoke aloud to them.

" _Kodai is, in fact, covered by a giant sea. A sea that hundreds of years ago swelled so much that it drowned most of the planet's land-dwelling inhabitants_ ," she reported. " _Today there is only one pocket of land; a single city. It is sparsely populated by a few thousand Kodaians who spend most of their time trying to preserve their way of life on land, in spite of the fact that most believe that the sea will rage again and kill them all_." Jocasta was silent for a moment. Kenny guessed that she was reading ahead.

" _Interesting_ ," she murmured. " _It seems that the sea has shown no signs of raging in the last hundred years. In fact, the opposite seems to occur. Every ten years, when the planet's two moons sync up, the sea experiences a spectacularly low tide_."

"I see," Kenny mumbled, glancing at Cartman as they both filed away the information for later.

" _That's not all_ ," Jocasta said. " _What's particularly fascinating is that the planet's moons will be syncing up the day after tomorrow_."

"Interesting timing," Cartman agreed in a grumble.

It was now pretty obvious that Professor Lundi's trip to Kodai at this particular moment and his search for mining equipment were not coincidences. But all this new information still did not make it any clearer about why it had been so difficult to find a pilot to take them to Kodai.

Jocasta was quiet for several long moments while Kenny and Cartman digested this information. When she did not end the transmission, Kenny guessed that she had more to tell him.

"Is there something else?" he finally asked, sharing a look with Cartman. Jocasta's time was invaluable to her. She was head of the Jedi Temple's archives, after all. If she did not have more knowledge to share with them, she would have hung up on them without so much as the traditional Jedi parting of wishing the Force be with them.

" _Yes_ ," Jocasta replied slowly, as if she was unsure if she should dispense the information or not. Finally she spoke again, having come to the decision to simply spill the beans. " _Another collection of Sith materials was found. The Council reported that this time it was on the planet Tynna in the Expansion Region. And a strange explosion has occurred on the peaceful planet Nubia. Nobody has come forward to take credit for the blast, but a drawing of a crude Sith Holocron had been scraped onto a duracrete wall outside the ruined building. I am unsure if your Master is with you or disposed at the moment, but any and all knowledge is an advantage to you right now_."

Kenny closed his eyes for a moment. The discovery of the additional stash was not surprising, at least not after they had started their mission. But an explosion was something new; something deadly. The situation was heating up, and he felt a great deal of pressure to defuse it.

"Thank you for the information, Madam Jocasta." Kenny told her, being sure the smile on his face reached his tone of voice. "We will be in touch if we need anything further. May the Force be with you."

"Of course, young Padawan. I will be here if you need me. May the Force be with you as well." Jocasta switched off her com-link.

"I wish the other one was still around…" Cartman muttered with his arms crossed against his chest. Kenny too felt a pang of sorrow. He liked Madam Jocasta as much as any other Jedi, but he wished that Madam Tahl was still amongst the living. Cartman had a giant crush on the former archivist and Jedi Knight Tahl. And though she had been killed several months ago, her absence still felt like a blade in the hefty boy's chest. Kenny put away his com-link and sat down on the floor to meditate until their next step in this mystery became clear in his mind. Cartman turned and abruptly walked away.

* * *

Kenny was just beginning to feel his body relax when Stan rushed into the hold.

"Kenny!" the raven-haired novice shouted, alarm clear in his tone. "They have a fucking bomb on the ship!"

Kenny leapt to his feet in an instant, following Stan back to the bridge, where the bomb had been planted underneath a low shelf. Stepping into the wide room, Kenny saw that Kyle was already bent down carefully, examining the device. It was black and square with a simple timer on top.

A crude drawing of a Sith Holocron etched into the side.

"I suppose I should have expected something like this," Wendy complained from her seat at the controls. "I just hope your famous Jedi powers can defuse that thing before it blows up my ship. Oh, and us along with it."

"I'll do my best," Kyle said wryly. "Do you have a set of tools we could use?"

Wendy pointed to a small box in the corner, "You should find everything you need in there," she said.

Stan quickly grabbed the box and brought it over to Kyle while Kenny crouched down beside the redhead.

"That symbol is becoming a little too familiar," Stan noted, pointing at the Holocron emblem.

"But the device itself does not look too sophisticated." Kenny mused while Kyle nodded.

"This shouldn't be too much of a problem to defuse." The redhead said calmly, casting a glance toward the captain. "But I'm not so sure about our pilot's temper."

The others all cracked smiles, even as Stan felt queasy about this whole thing. How could they all be so calm about a fucking bomb?

Kyle opened the tool kit and pulled out a long, slender pick. After carefully inserting it into the side of the bomb casing, the redhead slid it back and forth until they heard an audible beep. The box opened and several strands of colorful wire popped out. A timer behind the wires indicated that the bomb would go off in less than a minute.

"Holy fuck!" Stan jumped away, bracing himself against the closest wall behind him. Shmi refused to turn around as she clenched her eyes shut and sat rigid rod straight in the co-pilot seat next to Wendy. Wendy was not at all scared, but more of agitated.

"Not much time," Kenny murmured quietly.

Kyle knew the shabby blond was right. The redhead had not expected to see so many different colored wires inside the bomb. It was a more complicated design than Kyle originally thought. Focusing energy on the bomb, Kyle snipped all of the red wires. But the timer did not switch off. It now read forty seconds, and was counting down.

"Maybe you should try the black wire," Kenny suggested like it was an offhand comment about the weather. Kyle did not think this was likely. It was the only black wire, and too obvious a solution. But as the redhead studied the wire, Kyle sensed that there was indeed something significant about it. Still, it wasn't a sure thing that cutting it was the right thing to do.

"Twenty seconds, Kahl" Cartman said breathlessly. Now was not the time to comment on the boy's weight, as much as Kyle wished it was.

Kyle looked at the bomb more closely. One end of the black wire ran directly into the metal inside the casing. At the other end the black plasticoating ended a few millimeters before the wire touched the metal. Underneath the missing black coating was a series of bright yellow wires. They fanned out to form a row and slid neatly into a metal jack.

"Ten seconds!" Stan blurted out, now clenching against the wall and his blue eyes screwed shut tight.

Kyle reached down, placing thumb and forefinger on either side of the yellow wires. Closing jade green eyes, Kyle twisted them away from the jack. There was a small popping sound as the wires pulled free. The timer on the bomb continued to count down.

But when it reached one second, it suddenly stopped.

"You did it! You did it, you sexy flame-haired little Jedi Jew, you!" Kenny cheered, hugging Kyle tightly around the shoulder while sounding extremely relieved. Kyle opened green eyes and saw the number frozen on the timer.

"Oh fuck…" Kyle muttered, and a flash of faintness passed through the redhead.

"We can do that later, you badass hero." Kenny said wryly with a wink, causing Kyle to lightly slap him.

"I guess you Jedi are good for something," Wendy grumbled, but there was humor in her voice, and she was smiling broadly alongside Shmi. "Thank you," she added quietly.

Kyle put the tools back into the case, and Stan scrambled to help the redhead to stand. "You're welcome," Kyle said while smoothing down green robes.

* * *

Kenny returned to the hold, this time with his fellow three Jedi. He closed his eyes and started to meditate for the second time that day. The planted bomb was something else to consider. Was it meant to kill them, or simply throw them off guard? And who had planted it? It must have been someone who was following them closely, someone who was highly prepared. Not much time had elapsed between the Jedi arranging their travel and their subsequent takeoff. Kenny began to breathe deeply, letting his mind clear and then focus.

But something was interfering with his concentration. While they had dropped into meditation, Stan was pacing the floor in front of them. The click of his leather boots made it hard to concentrate. Kenny opened an eye, but Kyle beat him to the punch.

"Why don't you try sitting with us? Come try some meditation." Kyle said, gesturing Stan over by patting the chair beside the redhead. Stan stopped pacing, looking at Kyle before nodding and sat down.

Even after he had stopped pacing the room, the others could tell he was still agitated. With both eyes open now, Kenny studied his friend and now fellow Jedi in training. Stan was adept in the Force and more than a little handy with a lightsaber. He was more than worthy to be called a Padawan, but Kenny would let the Council decide to make that official or not. Kenny would still think it though. Stan sat cross-legged in a chair with his eyes closed. But his shoulders were tensed, and beneath his eyelids Kenny could see movement.

"Are you alright, Stan?" Kyle once again beat Kenny to words. The redhead had shown concern in a soft voice. Stan opened his eyes and met the gaze of two of his friends. Cartman was blatantly ignoring his troubles, but Stan didn't much care.

"Yeah," he said slowly. And then, "No. Well, I don't know."

"You are afraid," Kenny stated plainly. A look of shame came over Stan's face, but he did not deny it.

"I know it's super easy for you guys to be Jedi, because you've all been Jedi for a long time." Stan admitted, "But I've only been a Jedi for a little over a week now. I get the Force. I get lightsabers. I understand how to fight and meditate and all that other junk and stuff, but what I don't get is how you completely shut down your emotions. I was all panicked and scared and my heart felt like it was going to leap from my chest when Cartman came in and found that bomb."

"What are you trying to say?" Cartman looked irritated, but Kenny knew that was just a cover because he didn't want to look worried over Stan. He was probably still feeling the sting to his pride from having a beginner fight him to a standstill in that first combat lesson a few days ago.

After all, it would explain why Cartman dragged Stan along and out of danger instead of just leaving the novice to die. Cartman obviously wanted a rematch somewhere down the line.

"I wish we were off fighting bad guys or something, not chasing shadowy thugs and finding bombs." Stan said, and looked ready to leap to his feet again to start pacing, "You guys told me you've been chasing this Holocron thing before I even showed up out of the blue. What if I'm connected to it somehow? Or if I am at risk to it?" finally Stan sighed deeply, and melted back into his chair, "I'm just not sure if I have the balls to fight this Holocron and that Professor dude…"

Kyle leaned toward Stan, patting his shoulder in comfort.

"You have every right to be afraid," Kyle said quietly. "Hell, we all are."

"Kyle's right," Kenny nodded, and Cartman only shrugged as if he didn't feel fear. "The true mark of a Jedi is to let yourself to feel the fear. I mean _really_ feel it, and then just let it go. Just let the emotion go. If it comes back, feel it again and let it go again. There should be no shame in your emotions. It's when you harvest them – letting them fester – that you start having problems."

"So it doesn't make me a bad Jedi if I shit my pants the next time we find a bomb?" Stan asked, looking up to Kenny.

"No, my young Padawan," Kenny replied in a wizened tone, and everyone chuckled this time, even Cartman.

Kenny then tried a tactic. He cleared his throat, and then gurgled his words as he spoke. "Control how we feel, we cannot. Only how we choose to handle our feelings." All of them burst out into laughter at Kenny's nearly spot-on Yoda impression. When the laughter died down, a look of true relief crossed Stan's face, and he smiled slightly. Kenny saw how the raven-haired apprentice's shoulders relaxed and he closed his eyes. Kenny could almost see the fear leaving his new friend. He was glad his advice had provided some relief. Sitting back, he too closed his eyes.

He only hoped the advice would work as well for him.

Kyle watched this transpire and breathed a sigh of relief. Stan and even Kenny were now put at ease. The mission would go a lot smoother because of this. The redhead spied Cartman looking comfortable as well, but when he caught Kyle watching him, he snorted with contempt and turned away to meditate. That was fine. Kyle was just glad everyone, including the redhead's own self, were now all relaxed.

* * *

By the time the ship landed on Kodai, Stan felt refreshed and no longer afraid. He was ready to move forward with the mission and with his new career as a Jedi of the galaxy.

Unfortunately, doing the former of the two declarations was not going to be easy…

Although the Jedi were quite certain that they were on the right planet, it was not at all obvious where they should go or what they should do. It was only clear that they were running out of time. Not to mention that wherever they went, they seemed to be attacked. Their pursuer, or pursuers, would not be shaken and wanted them stopped.

After dropping the Jedi off on a tiny platform in the sole island city of Rena, Wendy entered new coordinates into her nav-computer. She had agreed to take Shmi Skywalker to Coruscant to speak with the Jedi Masters on the High Council about seeing her son one last time before returning back to Tatooine with the help of Wendy.

"Don't think I'm sticking around or doing these favors just because you diffused that bomb," she grumbled, eyeing the shabby-looking city ahead of them. "Good luck to the four of you though," she added, shaking her head. "I have a feeling you're going to need it."

"Thanks for the support," Kyle said dryly as he and his fellow Jedi walked down the ship's loading ramp.

"And the transport, too." Stan tacked on lamely, waving a little too enthusiastically back at the dark-haired woman. Once you got passed her initial bad attitude and grumpy nature, Stan could really see himself liking Wendy a lot.

Kyle grabbed him by the ear and yanked him forward. This was not the time for Stan to develop Kenny's habit of flirting with everything in the known galaxy.

Out in the bright sunshine, the Jedi had to shade their eyes until they adjusted to the light reflecting off the vast sea. The city was small and appeared to have few inhabitants outside. There were cantinas, a single lodging house, and a marketplace where locals exchanged and bought food, most of which was harvested from the sea. Giant walls lined the streets. An attempt at flood protection, Kyle guessed.

While the locals didn't stare at them, Kyle got the impression that they were definitely being noticed. In fact, nobody looked at them at all. The Kodaians were trying too hard not to look at them. As the Jedi approached they cast their yellow eyes downward or bent their slender necks to study the horizon in the opposite direction.

"Do you get the feeling," Stan started off, "that they wish we would just suddenly drop dead?"

"Our presence seems to pain them." Kyle observed while Kenny and Cartman nodded.

"Exactly," the two agreed in unison. It was a strange feeling.

Both them agreeing and the way the locals were treating their arrival.

"Let's check the lodging quarters," Kyle suddenly suggested, "We'll need a place to stay while here, and Professor Lundi may be there as well."

The others accepted this logic, and and they strolled into a shabby but clean lobby. A thin Kodaian sat on a stool behind the counter. When he saw the undisguised Jedi, he nervously got to his feet.

"May I assist you with something?" he asked, fiddling with his stubby fingers and gazing at the floor. Stan wondered if he was always this agitated around his customers.

"We would like to rent one of your spaces," Kyle explained, "Do you have any to spare?"

The Kodaian closed his golden eyes for a moment, surprised by the question. Kenny guessed that Kodai and the quarters did not have visitors particularly often. After taking Kenny's credits, the Kodaian placed a card with a door code on the counter. Their room was 4R.

"We are also looking for a Quermian guest we believe you have at the moment." Kenny pressed as he tok the door key from the counter, "A professor by the name of Murk Lundi, perhaps?"

The Kodian winced at the mention of Lundi's name. Without making eye contact he pointed to an old elevator at the end of the hall. "His quarters are on the second floor, number 2F."

The Kodaian looked around to see if anyone was nearby before continuing, then leaned forward and addressed Kenny's boots. "He's a fine guest. He hasn't spoken to anyone since he got here. Hasn't even come out of his room."

Stan thought this was interesting information. He had gotten the distinct impression that the professor liked an audience. Any audience with all that dramatic flair he used back at the storehouse.

"Thank you," Kenny said, finally taking the key and turning away.

The Jedi made their way down the hall and stepped into the elevator which Kyle told him was not called that, but instead referred to as a turbo-lift. The redhead also explained, after the lift shuddered as it moved up the single flight to the second floor, that it was an older model that would probably need replacing in a few years.

Stepping off the lift, Professor Lundi's room was located at the end of the hall, and the room next to it was rented out. With the exception of breaking in or listening at the door, there was no way to know what was going on inside.

Kenny put his ear to the door and focused his auditory senses, but found it difficult to concentrate. It almost felt as if something was blocking his connection to the Force. He could not hear anything on the other side.

"Why do you suppose he would hurry to get here only to lock himself up and do nothing?" Kenny asked, looking at Kyle and Cartman for their opinions since Stan was also trying to hear at the door.

"We don't know what he could be doing in there," Kyle pointed out.

"It'll be impossible to tell what's going on inside until we're in there." Cartman added with something of annoyance in his tone.

They were all thinking the same thing as Kenny and Stan rose from by the door.

Another dead end.

Kenny let out a long sigh while he ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair. Frustration began to well in him once again, and he closed his eyes and relaxed his muscles until he felt the emotion fade. It was not easy, but he was able to do it. Kyle must have felt it, because when Kenny opened his eyes to the world, the redhead was smiling faintly and nodding at him.

"Well done, young Padawan." Kyle crowed with good humor, and they all chuckled lowly.

Stan sighed as he looked up and down the hallway. He then jabbed a thumb toward the turbo-lift. "Maybe if we ask some of those Kodaian people, they can tell us something new."

"Great idea, young Padawan." Kenny said, patting Stan on the back as they went.

"I'll go up to the room," Cartman said, snatching the key from Kenny's robes with an experienced hand. "I'll talk to some of the other guests here, and see what I can dig up."

"Me too," Kenny said, shoving Stan forward beside Kyle. "It's been a little hard with all four of us sticking together. But, if we split up, we'll cover more ground. Plus, it's suspicious as all hell to see four Jedi walking around in a group. You two hit the streets, and we'll hit the hotel."

Kyle frowned, but said nothing in disagreement. "That's fine. We can gather information if we talk to the Kodaians out there anyway," Kyle strode toward the turbo-lift, and Stan followed closely behind.

"Right, dude, just after we get them to look deep into our eyes." Stan said, aware that his voice was a little more sarcastic than he wanted at the moment.

"So glad to see your sense of humor is fully operational," Kyle said as they stepped back into the turbo-lift. They shared a smile, and set off to investigate.

* * *

Back outside, it quickly became clear that it would be nearly impossible to get Kodaians to talk to them openly. Stan had tried to appear as friendly as he possibly could when approached a Kodaian woman. The Kodaian stopped but did not look up at him. She stepped from one foot to the other as if unable to stand still. She whispered when he talked to her, and at the mention of Professor Lundi, she had looked up into his eyes, clearly alarmed. Her eyes were as large as saucers and her hands began to tremble. She quickly told him that she couldn't help them and rushed off while mumbling about needing to be somewhere else and something about the bottom of the sea. Watching the woman hurry away, Stan wondered if her fear was caused by speaking with him being a foreigner. And what was that stuff she started whispering to herself about the sea?

Stan told Kyle as much about the woman and their conversation as he could. Kyle started mumbling to, about the sea and the current state of the moons.

"This weird behavior of theirs could have something to do with the impending low tide." Kyle looked up to Stan with sharp jade eyes. Stan could see the redhead was thinking at a mile a minute with the big brain that lay underneath curly auburn hair. "Or perhaps Kodaians simply live in a constant state of fear because of their difficult past." Kyle began to shake her head. "Whatever the reason, that woman you spoke to clearly didn't want to share information."

They began looking around for someone else who might talk to them. That was when Stan spotted a young boy watching them from several meters away. Unlike the other Kodaians, he looked right at them and did not seem afraid.

"Excuse us!" Stan called out when they were near the boy. He knelt down next to him and smiled, "Have you seen a visitor with a long neck and many arms and hands?"

The boy nodded and pointed to the lodging quarters.

"He's inside. But hasn't come out. If you want information, go to the cantina and ask for Reis. He'll tell you whatever you want to know." Stan smiled down at the boy, grateful for the tip.

"Thanks," he said, and looked back at Kyle as they both felt lighter for finally getting somewhere.

They rushed back to the hotel, grabbing Kenny and Cartman before heading over to the cantina. Stan found himself squinting as they entered the cantina. It was darker inside than he would have liked. Perhaps the regulars of the place were unaccustomed to the light of day, or didn't want to be seen clearly. This place looked plenty shady, in both appearance and nature. It suddenly occurred to Stan that the dim interior in combination with the brilliantly lit entrance allowed everyone inside to see each newcomer before the newcomer could see them. Moving inward behind Kenny and Cartman, Stan was astonished at the variety of beings making use of the bar. Sure he had seen plenty of aliens so far from the transport and Mos Eisley, but never before in such close quarters had Stan seen so many different beings all in one place. There were one-eyed creatures and thousand-eyed creatures with scales, creatures with fur, and some with skin that seemed to ripple and change consistency according to their feelings of the moment. Hovering near the bar was a towering insect-droid that Stan glimpsed only as a threatening shadow. It contrasted with two of the tallest women Stan had ever seen. They were among the most normal-looking of the outrageous assemblage of humans that mixed freely among alien counterparts. Tentacles, claws, and hands were wrapped around drinking utensils of various sizes and shapes. Conversation was a steady babble of human and alien tongues.

Reis was not hard to find. He sat in a bare, dingy corner sipping a mug of some kind of blue liquor, the only Kodaian in the place. His gray hair was matted against his head and his face was unshaven. But his dark eyes were sharp as he took in their approaching Jedi forms.

"Mind if we sit down?" Kenny asked as Reis continued to size up each of them in turn, pausing where their lightsabers hung from their utility belts.

"Not at all," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I've always got time to talk to Jedi. Suppose you want to know all about the Holocron, eh?"

Stan felt a wave of shock at the mention of the word Holocron. Finally, someone else said it first. Perhaps now they would get the answers they so desperately needed. They were quick to sit down, and Reis smiled.

"Thought that might get your attention," he said, taking a long swig of his drink.

"It's there, all right," he said, putting the mug down. "Been there for as long as anyone remembers. Problem is, no one can seem to get it. Everyone wants it, but no one can get it. They try, but turn up dead or crazy every time."

"Yet attempts are still made to retrieve it." Kyle said pointedly, not asking but stating the fact with an edgy tone.

"Of course. People can't leave that kind of power alone, right?" Reis replied with a wave of his grubby hand. He leaned toward them, and Stan could smell the stale liquor on his breath. "I've heard that somebody, somewhere has offered to pay an incredibly large fortune for the Holocron. Nobody knows who it is. Still, it makes going after it a pretty desirable prospect. Rumor is that it's someone from Coruscant. Has to be someone pretty important, too. Like a Senator or something. My credits on it being Chancel—"

Stan suddenly stopped listening when a familiar figure entered the bar. It looked like one of the thugs who had attacked them on Tatooine. The raven-haired Jedi squinted, but the cantina was dark and he couldn't be sure. With a pang of anxiety he realized that his observation abilities hadn't been their strongest when they were shot at back on the desert planet. Things had been a little crazy, but Kenny or Kyle or Cartman might recognize the figure.

"Excuse us. Me and Kyle have to step outside." Stan said quickly, getting up from his chair and ignoring Kenny and Cartman's quizzical look along with Kyle's squeal of protest when he took the smaller Jedi by the collar to follow the figure. If it was one of those assholes from Tatooine, Stan wanted to catch them to do some interrogation the way cops did on television back home. And he'd love to be bad cop at the moment, threatening to kick them in the nuts or cut their wangs off with his laser sword.

He whispered in Kyle's ear what he suspected, and the redheaded Jedi nodded before they both crossed the cantina quickly, but not quickly enough. Whoever was at the bar saw them coming. With a panicked glance over his shoulder, the person disappeared out the door and into the street.

"Argh!" Kyle snarled, stomping a foot in agitation, "This is fucking insane!"

"And we almost had a suspect that time!" Stan slumped against the concrete behind him before looking up at Kyle. "Did you at least get a good look at the guy?"

Kyle snorted, but she still looked fiery. Kyle was beautiful to Stan, all hot and pissed off, but now wasn't the time to think about stuff like that. "I didn't need to. He was still wearing the same rags he wore when he shot Kenny in the arm!"

Stan leaned forward, ready to bolt after the thug, "Maybe if we ran, we could catch him." But Kyle held him back with the shake of a head.

"No point," Kyle sighed, "Even if we did catch up to him, we could just be walking into another trap."

"So what now then?" Stan found himself asking that question a lot since he somehow tumbled into the galaxy far, far away from home.

"We'll go check with Kenny and Cartman before resting up at the lodging quarters." Kyle said after fidgeting with the green hat atop her head and bringing it down lower over her fiery red hair. "Its evening on this planet, and some rest will do us well to find insight on the happenings of this mission."

"You sound like a Jedi Master," Stan said, and Kyle flushed as brightly as her hair at his comment.

"Thanks," the redhead replied, smiling nervously as though Stan had complimented her shoes, "I hope I live long enough and work hard enough to become a Jedi Master."

"You will Kyle," Stan said, and was sure of it. He put his hand on the small of Kyle's back, leading the green-robed Jedi back into the bar. "I'm sure of it."

* * *

Cartman rolled over on his sleep couch for the hundredth time. He could not rest. He wasn't sure if the synchronizing moons were the cause of his restlessness, or if it was just the ominous feeling he hadn't been able to shake since he first encountered Murk Lundi back on Coruscant. Either way, he could not sleep.

Giving up entirely, Cartman left the lodging quarters and wandered down to the beach. Perhaps the rhythmic sound of the waves would soothe him. He needed to get some rest before taking a turn watching Lundi's door. Kenny's shift was nearly up, and Kyle had already taken a turn alongside Stan.

Cartman's steps echoed in the still night as he walked. The darkness seemed to swallow him. After donning his night goggles he walked and walked, expecting to see and hear the water at any moment. He was sure the sea was much closer to the main street than this. Cartman suddenly felt confused, as if he had walked onto a completely different planet. Wasn't Kodai covered by a vast sea?

Cartman stopped and stared ahead, concentrating hard. At first he could not see any water. Then he thought he saw a liquid shimmer, but it was far away. He suddenly realized that the water had receded hundreds of kilometers since that afternoon.

Peering in the other direction, he spotted a large group of Kodaians farther down the beach. They carried torches and hovered around what appeared to be an ancient ruined structure, frantically digging at the seafloor. They were obviously trying to scavenge parts of the city that were lost in the flood hundreds of years ago. Watching them from a distance, Cartman was suddenly filled with a deep sense of disdain. Sure it had to suck to lose so much of your history to a raging sea, but after so long you would think these dumbasses would move on with their lives. Build some higher cities and space lanes like the ones found on Coruscant instead of being tortured every ten years digging up the broken pieces of a long dead part of their society.

Cartman scoffed as he turned back to the water, or lack of it to be more precise. In the near darkness he could not even be sure that the reflections he saw were, in fact, the sea.

But this was what they had been waiting for, wasn't it? An image and a voice flashed in Cartman's head, one of Professor Lundi storming out of the storehouse on Tatooine. He had said that he just needed to time it right. So wasn't this what he wanted? Cartman knew that the crazed alien professor had been waiting for the water to recede so that he could get the deadly Sith Holocron. The Kodaian sea would be at its lowest tide in a decade in just over an hour. Yet the asshole had not made even a step out of his room.

With a frustrated sigh, Cartman made his way back through the darkness to the lodging quarters. Outside the building he spotted someone racing away.

Wait… wasn't that one of the assholes who shot Kenny the other day? Unfortunately it was too dark to tell, but those rags stood out more than anything. Cartman shook his head. He had no time to go after the figure. He had to get back to the others. When his com-link wouldn't go through, he headed back.

"Hey, douchebags!" Cartman shouted, but stopped short.

Kenny was not at his lookout post and the door to the professor's room was wide open. No one was inside.

Suddenly, Kenny was behind him assessing the situation. "Oh, fuck! I only went to pee, goddammit! Where the fuck did he go?" Once again Kenny felt frustration well inside him, gripping his heart like a fist of anger. How were they going to locate Lundi and the Holocron now?

"Go wake up Stan and Kyle! We'll have to go on our instincts," Kenny spat out quickly, turning on heel to run to the turbolift. Cartman nodded, knowing the dirty blond was right. And anyway, they had no other choice.

Silently, Cartman shook Kyle and Stan awake and the three raced out from the hostel as Cartman led them toward the water.

The seemingly endless beach was now teeming with Kodaians and their digging tools. Pausing for a moment to close his eyes and focus, Cartman sensed that there was a deserted area farther north on the sand. The Jedi ran for all they were worth, out through several kilometers with Kenny nowhere in sight, moving as quickly as they could. All around them Kodaians were uncovering artifacts from the infamous flood of their past. Some held their newly discovered treasures high above their heads with glee, while others fell to their knees in tears. Cartman felt nothing but pity for them. Up ahead was a strangely deserted strip of sodden land. Kodaians worked busily on either side of it, but the raised area was completely empty.

"Why are they not digging in that spot?" Stan commented as he pointed a finger ahead.

"It's almost like an invisible barrier is keeping them away from it," Kyle observed while Cartman grunted.

"Maybe one is," Cartman replied while glancing around.

The Jedi hurried ahead. Several Kodaians stopped their digging and stared after them. They did not avert their eyes now, and some even shouted warnings. It was too late for that, Cartman thought snidely. They just ignored the Kodaians while moving forward, but as they did, Cartman felt the shudder of something dark and powerful surrounding him like a warm blanket. Glee and relief collided within him. They were definitely approaching the right place. The Sith Holocron was not far away.

"Am I the only one feeling unclean here?" Stan asked while running his hands hard over his robes to wipe away the imagined filth. Cartman growled to himself. The asshole was ruining his moment of satisfaction. But now was not the time for pleasure. Letting his ecstasy slip through him like water through a strainer, Cartman led the charge toward where they were sensing the Holocron. He was so intent on finding Lundi and the Holocron that he didn't see the crevasse in front of him.

"Cartman, stop!" they shouted behind him, and he skidded to a halt centimeters before a yawning black chasm. He peered into it, but could see nothing but darkness. A wave of evil energy wafted up at him.

The Holocron.

* * *

Without speaking, Cartman and Kyle pulled out their cable launchers and anchored the ends firmly into the seafloor next to the crevasse. A thousand thoughts were running through Cartman's mind, and he wanted to express them all to his redheaded companion. But doing so was impossible. Kyle was commanding Stan to stand guard over the chasm while they descended. It was like making a pet wait outside a renowned restaurant while going inside to have dinner. Glancing at the dark-haired boy who had so suddenly been thrust into their lives, the two shared a private nod. Cartman knew Stan wanted to be with them, but he was not fully a Jedi yet. The dark side was tempting, even to fully trained and knighted Jedi members. It would make the backwaters boy its bitch if given the chance.

Kyle and Cartman glanced at each other only briefly before they simultaneously rappelled over the edge into the blackness. Before long the top of the cliff disappeared from view. The crevasse wall was slippery and wet. Cartman took a deep breath as he continued to descend. Part of him wanted to know what he would find below, and part of him simply craved it. Suddenly he felt a flicker of movement in his cable. A second later a figure flew over the edge, and Cartman unclipped his anchor to catch the figure before it went careening into the darkness below.

"Stan! Cartman!" Kyle had glanced up for only a spilt second when the redhead saw a figure standing above them at the top of the chasm. It leaned over the edge for a moment, then was gone after it had knocked Stan off the side of the cliff. A moment later Cartman's launcher cord went slack and the meaty boy dived after Stanley with alarming speed and recklessness. Kyle immediately anchored a clip to the cliff and reached out to the Force to try and stop the fall of the two. But the dark energy in the giant crevasse worked against the redhead as Kyle felt oddly exhausted and had little ability to concentrate. Quickly though, the green-eyed Jedi pushed past such weakness and focused harder. The native Corellian willed Cartman and Stan to do the same. The sound of Cartman's launcher anchor scraping against the side of the crevasse was music to Kyle's ears. After a few seemingly endless seconds it caught, jerking Cartman to an abrupt halt with Stan over his shoulder. He dangled in the air somewhere below Kyle.

"Are you guys all right, Cartman?" Kyle called down, voice echoed off the chasm walls.

"This fucker is heavy!" Cartman complained, but Stan replied with: "Yeah, we're fine!"

"How did you get pushed down here anyway?" Cartman groaned as they continued to descend. There was no point in turning back now. It would just delay them unnecessarily. Or at least, that's what Cartman thought because he really didn't care much if Stan fell to darkness over not.

"That guy in rags pushed me down before I even noticed him behind me." Stan answered while Cartman tested his line. It was still secure. Then he rappelled the rest of the way as quickly as he could.

"I can see the bottom of the crevasse." Kyle said, and by the time they got to the crevasse floor, Stan had pulled one of the only emergency supplies Kyle allowed him to keep; a fucking glow rod. Cartman sent Kyle a smug look while stowing his cable launcher and was searching the area by the light of Stan's glow rod. The crevasse floor was rocky and covered by slippery vegetation. They would have to tread carefully.

"I don't see anything," Stan said, his normally boyish and cheery voice now sounding strangely hollow. Kyle wasn't sure if it was because of the chasm, his fall, or because they were so close to the Holocron. The concentration of dark knowledge could sap one's strength. Kyle certainly felt weakened. But the strange hollow feeling also let them know they were on the right track. The red-haired Jedi felt at once repelled and drawn closer to their dark goal. Cartman was rather smug as he ignited a second glow rod. If Kyle had known they'd be rock-climbing, he would have let Stan keep the grappling hook, but at the time it was dangerous to let someone he effectively viewed as a backwoods-planet hillbilly keep something so specialized and potential dangerous.

Obviously he'd be giving Stan back all the Jedi equipment after this mission was over and done with…

The Jedi searched the area until they came across a series of footprints. With the wet vegetation covering the chasm floor, it was impossible to tell if there was more than one set of marks. Kyle hoped at least Kenny was down there with them. As they moved farther away from their descent point, Kyle heard a low rumble. It sounded as though a storm was picking up. Or was the sea rising? It was now well past the time of the lowest tide and the water should be coming back up. A flash of lightning split the sky above. In the blast of light, Kyle saw two figure struggling in a grapple of grinding sabers that hummed with the sound of two diamond-bladed saws. The figures prowled in a circle around each other, and Kyle squinted in the glare of their red and blue saber blade in order to discern who they were. Could it be the Master? Was it Kenny? Kyle had no clue. But before the inquisitive Jedi could be certain in the gloom of night, a plume of water began to gush up through a large gap in the rocky shelf they were standing on. Shooting meters above red hair, it completely blocked Kyle's view and nearly knocked all three Jedi off their feet. As it rained down on them and seeped into their boots, Kyle was surprised to find that the water was hot. With a sudden sense of dread the young Corellian realized that they were at the bottom of one crevasse, but that there were probably several just like it below.

The seafloor was a honeycomb. They were by no means on solid ground. Water continued to push out of the hole with remarkable force, and there was no question that the tide was turning. When the gush finally subsided, Kyle felt the hot seawater seep into green robes and leather boots. They were more than up to their ankles in hot water.

And several meters ahead of them, on the other side of the gap, Kyle saw the combatants still fighting one another. Still in complete ignorance of the pressing situation.

* * *

The Master followed Professor Lundi through the cavern, pursuing even when he knew the tide could come at any moment. And now the Quermian had revealed what he truly was. More than any mere study of the Sith.

No, much more…

Lundi was a practitioner of the dark arts of the once great empire. But now the Sith sympathizer had run out of options. It was either face the Master in combat, or die with his back turned to his killer. The Master would never allow someone as foolish as this alien scum to possess the Sith Holocron. He knew that. And know so did the venerable Professor Lundi.

Lundi paused on the edge, and turned. "I know you Jedi want it! But it is mine! I found it! Be gone!"

The Master glared harshly into the alien's face, even as they simultaneously ignited their lightsabers. It was a mockery of all Force-users that this feeble-minded insect have even one plasma blade, but apparently he had crafted two for use in his multiple-armed greedy grasp. "Even if you kill me, I will never allow you to possess the Holocron. It's dark powers are beyond you." The Master held his blue saber high on the vertical, walking slowly toward the alien man, ready to follow if he was going to run anymore. There weren't many places he could leap to from the close-quarters before the Master was upon him, but then again this was a foolish instructor who had stumbled upon a taste of power. The Master did not expect him to possess a more refined grasp of lightsaber combat.

"Your students failed to follow me here!" the Quermian hissed, swaying his head like an angry hawkbat, "How is it that you found me!?"

"Imbecile!" The Master roared, "I was here all along! From the moment you left Tatooine I was behind you!"

Lundi paused again, but then a cruel smirk overcame his features, "There is just one little snag in your plans, Jedi."

The Master scoffed, readying himself for any diversionary tactic the loon could employ. He'd been preoccupied trying to contain Lundi, too busy cloaking their business from the greater galaxy to concentrate on feeling the subtler variations in the Force had left his mind. And surely any suggestion that he should turn his attention elsewhere was foolhardy at best, right? Yet, on impulsive reflex, he had stopped for the single moment.

And he felt it. The children were near. Very near indeed. Had they found him out already? Where had he gone wrong? What mistake had the Quermian left behind that would bring them out this far?

He willed himself to remain calm with all the training born of experience in releasing his anxiety to the Force. He was still a disreputable Jedi Master. Lundi was the crazed one here, not him. If the children actually arrived in time and not just die in the coming tide, he could still twist their feeble points of view into one that favored him greatly. Yes, that would work. The Master defending his precious Padawans while trying to recover a Sith Holocron from an insane Professor.

Oh, that sounded all the sweeter as he replayed it over and over in his mind. Maybe he'd even be able to "accidentally" slay one of the children while fighting Lundi…

"Go on, then." The Master said, now pointing his blade at Lundi's center, where his alien heart lay beating in his chest for the time being, "The only way it seems I'm going to end your insufferable babbling is by taking your head off. So, please, good professor, have your last moment on stage."

Lundi snapped his mouth shut tight as he raised his blades. He couldn't be bothered to hang around indulging this impudent man's love of theater. Now was the time! The time was now right to recover the great treasure! It had to be recovered now!

"Lay down your weapons!" The Master yelled harshly, hopefully loud enough for the children to hear him over the rumble of thunder above. He rushed forward with surprising speed, his lightsaber raised, and they stood toe-to-toe, locking blades and struggling. The Quermian stepped back to swing again with both blades, but the Master caught the tip of one and sent it spinning from his alien hand.

"Surrender!" he said, and Lundi could hear nothing but thunder rolling, in both the man's voice and from the outside world. Yet a Force-pull had his fallen lightsaber return to his grip, and the two locked blades again.

"You can't stop me!" Lundi cried, lifting his head. One of his many gangly arms fumbled for something under his robe, and he shakily pulled out a blaster. The weapon wobbled in his hand, and he fired recklessly. The Master quickly dodged, escaping the blast in spite of the close range. Breaking their deadlock, the Master whirled his blue blade once, and it cut through the air, deflecting the next blaster bolt and knocking the Quermian's blaster out of his hand. The weapon skittered across the crevasse floor and fell into the geyser gap.

"No!" Lundi cried, now flailing his sabers around like ancient maces, and the Master quickly grew tired of the charade.

"Refuse the Holocron, Quermian, and you may yet live." The Master whispered quietly. Lundi glared down at him from their sparking blades as they danced the tango of white hot sabers.

"I am no fool, Jedi! You will kill me anyway! I am competition! I am an adversary! I am… a rival…" Lundi's tone was cruel and mocking, but the Master only grunted once before stepping back, reentering his initial stance.

"No, you are merely a nuisance." The tone of the confrontation was one the Master enjoyed. It was strangely courteous, like an Irmenu noblemen's duel. Like what the Order of the Jedi was in his youth when he had committed himself to the Jedi long before they became backers of the bureaucracy of the Senate and the Chancellor's office.

Dooku had seen things right. Perhaps after this farce was over, he would leave the Order as well and give his old friend a call.

The Master threw out his hand and sent Force lightning crackling across the crevasse toward the Quermian, lighting up the night as though lightning had sparked from the skies above. Lundi swiveled out of the way, evading the bolts and channeling the lightning to his lightsabers and up toward the skies above.

"You have some talent for the dark side… It must come from praising its greatest wielders so often in your lectures…" The Master murmured before he lunged forward with his lightsaber, forcing Lundi back, then somersaulting over him even with the narrow space to further show his superiority through ridiculous acrobats that the alien spawn could never accomplish. Not when he was about to die.

The Quermian whipped one of his hands up at the Master almost without thinking, sending a Force wave of waters and pressure sweeping from the cavern at the man. The Master crouched for a moment from his leap, and then crouched lower as the waters passed over him, cloak pulled tight around him. Then he stood again, lightsaber outstretched.

"My apologizes, dear instructor. Was I being insensitive?" He walked forward, and Lundi lunged for him with his lightsabers. His attacks were blind and ferocious, oblivious of how each was met and drawn skirting away with the barest of efforts on the Master's part. Slashing and whirling at the Master until he drove him back to the more unstable grounds on the catacombs the man could sense spread out around them like a honeycomb nest. Stepping back onto them, the Master lost his footing. But the Master was a master duelist, even among the near infinite number within the Jedi Order. Yet, the Quermian did not know this, and was fast learning the fact. The Master ducked under his frantic sweeps and spun around behind him, slashing through the hilt of one lightsaber by accident when he had meant to cut through the alien's spine. This close to the Holocron had Lundi reacting faster than he should have been able, but still not fast enough to compete with a fully-trained Jedi Master.

"Oh dear," The master mocked mildly with a false look of embarrassment, "I seem to have cut your handiwork in half. I could school you on the symbolic meaning of the lightsaber, but I feel the knowledge would be lost on you…" Lundi held out his remaining lightsaber to fend off the Master, but the Master merely raised his eyebrows. The Master shrugged neatly before he carved a slow figure-eight in the air with the rounded tip of his saber.

The children were growing ever closer, now in fact down in the catacombs with him and Lundi. A new plan then since Lundi was half-crazed and half startling intellect. He would kill Lundi, then do away with the children, and finally be off with the Holocron to the Jedi Order. That sounded well enough.

"Kenny!" that was Kyle. Damn, why did it have to be Kyle? The Master knew that one of the children were missing, but why did it have to be Kyle as one of the present ones. Kenny would be easily over taken, and Cartman already treaded a line that was on the horizon. Stan was not yet a true Jedi Knight, so with the flick of his wrist the Master could have snapped the mystery boy's neck and framed him for everything.

Yet and still, Kyle was different. All those damnable Corellians were hot-headed and amazingly crafty. Corellians had no use for odds, it was said, and so they don't know when they're stacked against them. There were a number of traits that were commonly seen within the average human of Corellian descent. Kyle was no different. Kyle hid the traits well behind under auburn hair and that green ushanka as well as a thin veil of haughty intellect and superficial disinterest, but the Master saw things better than any. Prime among Kyle's personality traits was the redhead's tendency to be independent minded yet daring, pragmatic and slightly cautious in action. But Kyle also had fury. Fury so to the extent that the redhead's blood boiled like there was rocket fuel instead of blood.

Kyle had all the makings of a great Jedi Knight. But at the moment, those makings could throw a wrench in the Master's hastily crafted plan.

In that moment of distraction, the Master had not sensed Lundi upon him, but his annoyance with the fact rippled in the Force while he parried the alien again. The children were almost upon them when the professor lashed out again and again, trying hard to drive the Master back to no avail. The Master clipped his tongue against his teeth and slashed down at Lundi's legs. It caught his Quermian calf in a superficial way, and Lundi went down like a sack of rocks. He struggled to get to his feet, then collapsed in the water. The Master deactivated his saber and called Lundi's lightsaber to him through the Force. He let it power down as well while slipping back to seem as though one with the catacombs surrounding him.

For soon the entire charade would be over…

* * *

A crumpled form lying on the crevasse floor caught Stan's eye where there had once been flashes of blue and red clashing and grinding in sparks against one another. Kyle ran in front of him blindly toward the figure. Was it that alien professor, the Lundi guy?

It was! The Quermian lay limply on the crevasse floor with his face partially in the water. The eyepatch that normally covered one of his eyes was gone, revealing an empty socket.

Kyle was almost upon the professor when he lashed out.

"No! Stay back, Jedi! Back! It is mine! You can't have it! Fool! Fool, all of you! Master and apprentice!" Lundi shouted with crazed swivels of his head.

"Where is the Holocron?" Cartman demanded, pulling the Quermian to his feet.

"No, not you! You can never hold its power! Master and apprentice, never! It lays in my hand! Only mine! In my hand! In my hand! I shall hold it in my hand!" Lundi screeched, jabbing at Cartman with his pointed fingers.

"Where is it now?" Kyle asked through gritted teeth, Stan helping out by binding as many of the professor's skinny wrists together as he could catch.

"Let me go! Let me get it! It's not for you!" Lundi spat in Cartman's face and flailed wildly but he did not have the strength to break free. "I should be the one! Me! Not you, fools! Master and apprentice! All fools to think you could wield such incredible power as the Sith! True Sith! Not Jedi imposters!"

Kyle's mind reeled. The ushanka-wearing Padawan could feel that they were close to the Holocron. Very close. Kyle tried to focus, to find its location, but the dark side was playing tricks with the redhead's mind. It was so near and still beyond mental sight.

Stan saw Kyle try and focus, but there was still so much he didn't understand. If Lundi had the Holocron, where was it now? Did someone else have it? Had he been unable to handle the power? Questions were still forming in his mind when the rock beneath Cartman's feet shuddered. For a split second Stan saw the tubby Jedi consider diving into the swirling waters to find answers to the questions that were swirling around in all their minds. Even the Master, who stood beyond in the steamy waters, looked ready to jump with him. But Kyle must have seen what Stan saw because the redhead slapped Cartman and the fat boy's sanity returned.

"If that stupid thing is lost down here, then even the Jedi can't get it for another ten years," Kyle said, looking equally between Cartman and Stan, as though Stan too held thoughts of going after the dark object. Maybe Kyle saw something in him that Stan himself didn't see. Kyle was smart like that. "And if we can't recover the damn Holocron, then it's highly unlikely that anyone else could, either."

"I'll carry him," Stan told them abruptly. He did not want to waste his strength explaining himself. Even with his limited training and even more limited sensing abilities, he could just tell this place was ready to blow. Or sink. Or something! It was bad, either way.

Before Stan could lift Lundi from the chasm floor, a second rush of water hurtled out of the gap. Kyle saw it coming and steadied the raven-haired new Jedi, helping him get the insane alien onto a shoulder. But now the water was halfway up their calves. Cartman led the way, holding his glow rod out in front of them. They had to walk carefully along the rocky shelf, back to the crevasse wall. The water around Stan's legs made it difficult to know where to step, and Lundi was continuously flailing several arms and raving in his ear.

"The Holocron!" he screamed, struggling against Stan's firm grip. "I must get the Holocron! It's mine. Mine! The Jedi must not have it!" Stan tried to ignore the professor, which wasn't easy. And the Master had mysterious vanished from his sight, which made him thing he was crazy.

Finally Stan could see the place where they'd descended. But how were they going to get back up to the top with a crazy alien and only one anchored cable launcher?

"You go up with Kyle on the cable," Stan suggested, and the two apprentices stared at him as though he were insane, "I can climb up and be halfway there by the time you guys get out. Then you can just toss the other cable back down to me."

The sad part was, Kyle wasn't sure they had time to argue. Kyle was equally sure that Stan wouldn't make it while holding onto Lundi. But they knew what this was. There were no better options that either could see, and Stan was willing to sacrifice himself for their sake by taking Lundi down with him.

Probably because Lundi wouldn't stop screaming in his ear.

"Just leave the fucking lunatic!" Cartman shouted, but had already hoisted himself off the rocky shelf with his cable clipped firmly in place to his belt. Kyle glared up at him, but sighed while turning to Stan.

Sensing something coming from below, Kyle pushed Stan back just in time for a stream vent of hot water to burst out of the rocky shelf floor and lash at soft skin in a scalding spray.

"KYLE!" Stan screamed and rushed forward.

Cartman paused in his climb half up the crevasse, looking panicked over Kyle's endangerment. Stan still held Lundi firm, but now on his other shoulder he had a white-knuckle grip on Kyle. Cartman wondered which one of the two Stan would leave behind in order to climb the fissure if he conveniently forgot to send the main cable back down.

Just as those thoughts passed through Cartman's sick mind, a small ship appeared overhead. Flattening himself against tight against the crevasse wall for cover, Cartman cursed their luck. There was no way of knowing who was inside the ship, or what they were after. The ship descended as close to the crevasse as it could, and a long ladder dropped down in front of him and lowered further down to Stan and his two invalids.

The vessel looked vaguely familiar, but in the darkness it was hard to identify it. Stan squinted up at Cartman and the ship above with uncertainty. Kyle was now unconscious, but thankfully was light in the weight department. Without Kyle's insight, Stan was not clear about the ship, but he was not one to refuse help that they truly needed right now. The raven-haired teenager grabbed hold of the ladder by linking his arm through a rung and climbed that way with all his might. Even with the evenly spaced rungs, getting the struggling professor and unconscious Broflovski safely to the ship was no easy feat.

About halfway up, Lundi passed out too and Stan cursed his luck.

When Stan finally pulled himself into the ship, he was exhausted. Holding Lundi with one arm and Kyle on his other shoulder, Stan gripped each step with his teeth in order to move his free hand to the next step. Twice his boots slipped on the wet rungs, nearly sending him and his baggage into the waters below. At last he reached the ship's hatch and dragged himself, Kyle and his burden aboard.

"Nice to see you again," came a gritty female voice from the cockpit. Stan was surprised to see Wendy.

She grinned at his reaction, Kenny right next to her in the co-pilot seat waving. "Didn't expect to see me, did you?" she asked, and Stan shook his head.

"No, but thank you," he told her sincerely. "Really, if not for you, we'd have drowned or worse."

The pilot turned back to her controls and lifted the ship into the air, shaking her head at Stan's honest expression. "You don't have to thank me," she replied in a mutter, "It was just something about you or this place… It got under my skin, and I came back shortly after breaking the planet's orbit. I just couldn't leave you here. After all, you saved my ship from being blown up. I wanted to return the favor."

"You're welcome!" Kenny sang smugly as he moved.

"We're grateful," Stan remarked as he flopped onto his back on the ship's floor with the unconscious pair of Kyle and Lundi. Cartman muttered about needing the refresher, and went into the restroom. If Stan had the energy, he'd have strapped Lundi down in a seat and broke out a fucking straightjacket for the alien weirdo. But, Stan didn't think the old Quermian had much strength left in him, so for now he'd take his chances.

Kenny got up from the co-pilot seat, grinning as he made his way over. But seeing Kyle's state of unconsciousness sobered his expression and flipped the redhead over.

"The hell happened to Kyle?" Kenny asked, even as Cartman was coming back from the restroom. Kenny stripped Kyle of the large wet cloak and moved to remove the green tunic top next. Stan caught his hand, eyes wide and face flushed with nervous energy.

"Dude!" Stan glanced around, mainly at Cartman, "Don't you think you should do this… I don't know, somewhere more private?"

Kenny wretched his hand free of Stan's grasp, "We don't have time for this! Ky could be really hurt!"

"Yeah, I get that but Kyle is—" Stan's words caught in his throat and his eyes bulged open like two enormous saucers.

" **KYLE IS A BOY**?!"

Suddenly the professor's head snapped up. Stan and Kenny jerked back with Kenny holding Kyle's limp body in his arms. The top half of Kyle's tunic was undone, exposing Kyle's pale and clearly male chest to the cold recycled ship air. Lundi craned his long neck forward, forcing the Jedi to scurry against the ship's opposite wall. The Quermian's good eye rolled around in its socket as he closely examined the Jedi.

"Peacemakers!" he spat, "You have begun a war. None shall have my precious! None! Master and apprentice! Fools, all of you!" Lundi whipped his small head back and forth on the end of his slender neck. "War! War!" he repeated over and over, each time his voice growing louder and harsher. Stan opened his mouth to speak but saw that it would be of little use. He could only watch as the alien madman whipped himself into a frenzy. The power of the dark side had corrupted him. It was clear to the newly-minted Jedi that Lundi was insane.

"You can't handle it, Jedi! Dark master and darker apprentice! You don't know what to do with it! You don't deserve it!" The professor raved on. Kenny wasn't sure if Lundi was even talking to any of them any longer. Taking a deep breath, Kenny tuned out Lundi's mad rants. He tried to quiet his mind, consoling himself with the fact that the Holocron was not in Lundi's possession. Professor Lundi would be escorted back to the Temple and evaluated, but Kenny felt quite certain that all of them would need psychiatric help after this mission.

Still, he knew this mission was far from over in the reality.

Cartman had clearly had enough, as he strutted over to the crazed alien man and slugged him across the face, knocking the professor back into unconsciousness.

Kenny let out a sigh in the silence afterward. There were also questions for the Galactic Republic regarding what Lundi had intended to do with the Holocron. This was not the way Kenny had hoped to return from this mission. Half in success, and half in failure. He did not have the Holocron, his friends seemed rattled, and there was also still the question of who, besides the Jedi and Professor Lundi, knew it was down there.

And where the hell was the Master?

"Have any of you seen the Master?" Kenny asked, and Stan looked toward him.

"He was down there with us… I think I saw him at least… Everything down there was dark and cold and confusing… But I think it was him I saw…" Stan's voice grew quiet and trailed off without being able to meet Kenny's eyes. He wasn't even sure if what he saw was real anymore. Kyle had not reacted to the Master, nor did Cartman. Both of them knew the guy, and yet they had not even turned to the man when he stood less than a few meters away, even if he was obscured by steam and shadow. And who had pushed him down into the chasm? Had the Master even been down in that chasm with them?

Stan slumped down into a nearby chair and heaved a heavy sigh. He was exhausted, and the best he could hope for was that the damn evil Holocron-thing stayed at the bottom of that gorge in the alien ocean for at least another ten years if not outright forever.

And hopefully Kyle would be alright after this whole debacle…

And more hopefully, Kyle wouldn't be too pissed off that Stan thought he was a girl for so long…


End file.
